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This little pamphlet, the production of a beloved 
relative, now deceased, has been printed by the under- 
signed, for the use of the regiments in the field, from 
the State of New York, with the hope that it may 
prove acceptable to those who are risking their lives 
in their country's service. 

E. D. MORGAN. 

Albany, February, 1862. 



RUIN AND RESTORATION; 

ILLUSTRATED FROM THE 

PARABLE 

OP THE 

PRODIGAL SON. 

BY 

REV. JAMES ROWLAND, 

n 

LATE 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 
CIRCLEVILLE, OHIO. 




w ALBANY, N. Y. : 
WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
1862. 




WEED, PAR80K8 <fc COMPANY, 

8TEREOTTPEBS AND PRINTERS. 



p 



CONTENTS. 



Page 



I. The Waywardness of Youth, 9 

II. Dancing, 22 

III. The Theatre and the Strange Woman, 36 

IV. Profane Swearing, 49 

V. Gambling, < 61 

VI. Intemperance, 74 

VII. Consequences of Sin, 89 

VIII. The Resolution, 103 

IX. The Plea, 118 

X. The Restoration, 134 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



When an individual ventures to present the productions of his 
pen to the public, apology is hardly admissible. The public may 
inquire, why do you crave our ear if you have nothing of impor- 
tance to communicate ? Or if crudeness and imperfections of style 
be the point for which indulgence is sought, they may say with 
truth, why do you not correct these imperfections before you ask 
a place for your book among the literature of the day? Books 
should be models, and not apology-seekers. But there are circum- 
stances where apology is due, both to the author's own reputation 
and to the reading community, and where a simple statement of 
facts will, of itself, dispose the reader to overlook blemishes that 
he might otherwise censure with just severity. These lectures now 
offered to the public — especially to the young — are the work of 
the last few months of ministerial life, prepared and delivered under 
the infirmities of the last stages of pulmonary disease. They 
were intended for the youth of the author's congregation, without 
reference to any ultimate purpose of publication. At the close ot 
the series, the request was generally made that they should be put 
in a more permanent form, as a memento or legacy from the pastor 
to the youth of his congregation. Under the impression that he 
had strength yet remaining to revise them, and, in many respects, 
essentially change their character, the author made arrangements 
for their publication. But the rapid advance of disease has pre- 
vented him from accomplishing that purpose, and he is compelled 
to send them forth in precisely the form in which they were 
originally written and delivered, containing, as he is sensible, 



6 



Prefatory Note. 



many things that, though admissible in a familiar lecture, may be 
regarded by some as better omitted in a book, but which cannot 
lie expunged without an indiscriminate mutilation, to which the 
author is unwilling to submit. Beside, it is doubtless true, that 
substance may be sacrificed to sound, and an idea diminished in 
its force, or obscured by being clothed in feeble though elegant 
language. "While vulgarity and low provincial phrases admit of 
no excuse, yet there is a certain class of plain Saxon words, in 
common use, which sometimes express a thought with greater 
force than those which a highly refined taste would regard as more 
chaste and beautiful. 

"We should consider, also, that the public taste is not formed 
upon a fixed model ; but what would be considered as a defect by 
one, would be regarded as an excellence by another ; and a book 
that is addressed to youth, with the expectation of being read by 
them, must speak in accordance with their tastes and mental habits. 
For this reason, the author prefers submitting it to the public as it 
is, rather than to attempt anything less than the complete renovation 
designed when its publication was first contemplated. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



Parables are designed to convey important instruction, in a 
simple, attractive and impressive manner. It was a mode of teach- 
ing commonly practised in the earlier ages of the world. The 
advantages which they possess over other methods of instruction 
are obvious. They fix the attention, without which neither the 
mind nor the heart can be impressed. They are easily compre- 
hended ; it requires no analysis, nor even a nice faculty of discrimi- 
nation, to perceive their point or force. They disarm prejudice. 
Thus, under the garb of a pleasing fiction, they often inflict the 
most dreadful stings upon the conscience. 

An illustration of this is found in the parable which Nathan pro- 
pounded to David. Here the prophet supposed a case of injustice, 
precisely parallel to the crime which David had committed, and 
asked his opinion, as a just ruler, of such a case of iniquity. David 
immediately replied, that it was worthy of death. Then the 
prophet turned upon him with the withering rebuke, " Thou art 
the man." 

Many rules have been given by able commentators for the 
interpretation of parables; but probably no better rule can be 
adopted than that which is suggested by the exercise of plain, 
practical common sense ; understanding, however, that parables 
always convey some spiritual truth under the guise of a narrative 
or allegory, therefore there must necessarily be some things which 
are introduced merely to give connection to the different parts, 
and consistency to the whole. The parable of the Prodigal Son 
illustrates many important truths, with a force and vividness which 



8 



Introductory. 



could not have been attained by any other method. Truths that 
are interspersed throughout the whole volume of inspiration, are 
here grouped together and applied, so naturally and so symmetri- 
cally, that they touch the sympathies of the heart. We see in 
imagination different actors, and the various scenes described with 
such vividness, that we can hardly divest ourselves of the idea that 
they are real. 

The most striking points presented to the mind are: The way- 
wardness or folly of youth ; the consequences of improvidence ; 
the exercises of heart experienced by a penitent ; the disposition 
of God toward the humble ; the joy of holy beings at the conver- 
sion of a sinner. These are the leading topics to which I shall 
direct your attention in the succeeding lectures ; using the parable 
as the basis of my remarks, and referring to it for the purpose of 
illustrating such truths as may be presented. 



RUIN AND RESTORATION. 



1. WAYWARDNESS OF YOUTH. 



AND HE SAID, A CERTAIN MAN HAD TWO SONS I AND THE YOUNGER OP THEM SAID TO HIS 
FATHER, FATHER, GIVE ME THE PORTION OF GOODS THAT FALLETH TO ME. AND HE 
DIVIDED UNTO THEM HIS LIVING. AND NOT MANY DATS AFTER, THE YOUNGER SON 
GATHERED ALL TOGETHER, AND TOOK HIS JOURNEY INTO A FAR COUNTRY, AND THERE 
WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE WITH KIOTOUS LIVING. — Luke XV : 11, 12, 13. 

It was customary among the Romans and Phoenicians, when 
a son came to a certain age, for the father to give him a share 
of his property; and if the father neglected, or refused to 
comply with his custom, the son could appeal to the civil 
tribunal, and obtain it as a right. It is possible that some 
such practice existed among the Jews ; though it had not the 
sanction of law, and that this incident in the parable only 
refers to a transaction that was of frequent occurrence among 
them. 

How naturally does this opening scene represent the feelings 
of many young men as they enter the great world of toil and 
pleasure I Doubtless this young man imagined that the road 
to wealth and honor was open before him, and that he need 
only to obtain his patrimony, or that portion of his father's 
property, which would fall to him by inheritance, in order to 
enter at once and successfully upon his career. 

The next step that we observe in his history, is, that, having 
obtained the object desired, either in money, or in something 
2 



10 



Ruin and Restoration 



equally valuable, he sought to remove himself from the obser- 
vation of his father. He probably possessed a spirit of wild 
adventure, not uncommon at the present day; and that he 
might not be embarrassed, or restrained by any consideration 
of a filial nature, he gathered all together and took his journey 
into a far country. We should judge that he did not appre- 
ciate the value of good counsel, or the experience of one who 
might have saved him many bitter hours of remorse, when he 
had learned the folly of his course by his own unhappy expe- 
rience. The consequences of this self-sufficient, reckless spirit, 
were such as we should anticipate. He soon dissipated his for- 
tune in riotous living ; probably indulging in all the pleasures 
and vices of the day and age, which doubtless were in many 
respects, identically the same as those that ruin, temporally 
and spiritually, so many of the youth of our own day. 

The character of this young man may be taken as the type 
or representative of a large class, as they enter upon mature 
life. Waywardness is a characteristic of youth; and in the 
use of this term, I restrict myself to what the word literally 
signifies. It is liking our own way, and liking it so well as 
to be unwilling to profit by the experience of others. You 
cannot then charge me with unkindness, or uncharitableness, 
when I say, that it is characteristic of every youth of either 
sex, to be impatient of restraint ; especially when they arrive 
at that age where it is proper for them to begin to think and 
act for themselves. Perhaps some whom I address have 
already felt the restraints of paternal authority irksome, and 
a strong desire to break away from their bondage, that they 
may follow out the fancies of a young and ardent imagination. 
If this be true, let me invite your particular attention to the 
subject before us, while I shall attempt to show you the cause 
of this feeling, and to point out the consequences of indulgence. 

L The first topic which I shall notice, as a cause of this 
disposition, is that want of expekience which is incident to 
youth. We enter life with no knowledge of what life is. It 
is only from our own observation and experience that we ever 



Waywaedness of Youth. 



11 



arrive at just conclusions respecting ourselves and others ; or 
that we can estimate properly our true position in the world. 
"We are liable to be deceived by external appearances, and it is 
often the case that nothing but a painful experience in our own 
lives will dissipate the delusion. Consequently when the mind 
becomes somewhat matured, however much it may have been 
cultivated by education or endowed with natural gifts, yet, from 
the circumstances of the case, it can never have acquired that 
kind of knowledge which is necessary to struggle successfully 
with the great world of sin and temptation, of falsehood and 
deception. 

The youthful mind is confiding, ingenuous and easily misled, 
in relation to those matters which affect its happiness here and 
hereafter; and there is a certain kind of painful experience, 
which must be acquired before we can properly appreciate the 
depravity of mankind, or understand the deceitfulness, selfish- 
ness and, in some cases, the malignity of the human heart. 
The child that has been tenderly watched and carefully screened 
from all contact with vice, who has had every want anticipated 
by parental solicitude, has little idea of the struggles, mortifica- 
tions and defeats which attend a conflict with experienced and 
artful men and with the great world upon which he has entered. 
Caressed and flattered as he has been, his innate vanity is fed, 
until he imagines that he can grapple at once and successfully 
with men and circumstances ; and he only learns by a bitter, or 
perhaps, like that of the young prodigal, a ruinous experience, 
how wofully he has been mistaken in his estimate of himself 
and others. 

Without doubt a fatal error is often committed in the training 
of children. They are carefully guarded against the influence 
of temptation. The nature, even, of those temptations to which 
they will necessarily be exposed, and the various arts and bland- 
ishments which the tempter will assume, are all concealed from 
their knowledge, lest these should contaminate the mind, until 
they arrive at the age where they must begin to act for them- 
selves ; and then they are thrust out into the world, with the 
stature and appearance of men, but with the simplicity and 



12 



Ruin and Restokation. 



inexperience of children. No wonder that children, reared in 
this way, fall an easy prey to the artful and the vicious. They 
have not that kind of knowledge which is necessary to guard 
them against the first insidious influence of temptation, and 
before such an individual is aware of his danger he has fallen 
into a deadly snare. His self-respect and the respect of his 
friends are lost, his power of resistance" weakened, and he 
abandons himself to his imagined fate. Every one wonders 
how a youth so carefully raised, and so well instructed, should 
turn out so miserably. But the reason is plain enough. The 
radical error has been that, while the intellect was well stored 
and the moral faculties were cultivated to a high degree, yet 
they have been developed without the influence of temptation ; 
consequently the power of resistance has lain dormant. The 
temptations are those incident to manhood, and the power of 
resistance only equal to that of childhood. The cultivation of 
this power is a very necessary part of the education of every 
youth. It is something which cannot be acquired in the church 
or in the Sabbath school, or by any other means than by con- 
tact with the world. Dangerous as the experiment may be, yet 
we should remember that it is in this world, with all its vices 
and temptations, and under all manner of evil influences, that 
we are to live, and that our characters are to be developed ; and 
the earlier we learn to resist evil and overcome temptation, the 
stronger will be our power of resistance. 

Beside, the danger is really less to a child who begins to resist 
the temptations incident to childhood, and then develops this 
power with his character, than to the young man who is exposed 
to all the temptations of manhood, with the experience of a 
child. This is like taking the plants from your hot-house and 
exposing them at once to the power of the elements. Their 
roots are too superficial, and their structure altogether too deli- 
cate to resist the action of the sun, wind, rain and cold. This 
is forcibly illustrated by a simple incident which occurred under 
my observation. As I was walking through the fields, in a 
meditative mood, my attention was arrested by notes of wild 
agony that issued from a hedge which bordered upon my path. 



Waywardness of Youth. 



13 



1 approached to learn the cause of this distress, and discovered 
a little bird, hardly fledged, which had probably become impa- 
tient of the narrow limits to which maternal solicitude had 
confined it, and, unconscious of danger, was vainly attempting 
to mount in its natural element; but each successive effort 
brought it nearer the ground. I looked still further, to discover 
the nest, that I might return the truant to its home, and my 
eyes rested upon a huge black cat, which was intently watching 
the course of his intended victim ; and the scream of agony 
that had attracted my attention was the cry of its anxious 
mother, who had discovered the danger of her child, and was 
vainly sounding her note of alarm. Moved with pity, I drove 
away the feline enemy and placed the little truant in its nest. 
But it was all in vain. It had caught a glimpse of the great 
world without and could no longer endure the restraints of 
home. And it is, and always has been, my deliberate opinion 
that it fell a victim to the stealthy mouser who had already 
marked it for its prey, destroyed by its own waywardness. For- 
cibly does this trifling incident illustrate the conduct of many, 
who, without experience, rush out into the great world of wick- 
edness and fall early victims to an enemy more relentless than 
any that have power only to kill the body. Like this silly 
bird, they think the}?- can soar above every danger, and find 
themselves suddenly precipitated to the depths of disgrace and 
ruin. 

II. Another fruitful source of waywardness is the false 

IMPRESSIONS THAT ARE MADE BY READING FICTITIOUS BOOKS. 

Of course I cannot attempt, in this connection, to portray the 
manifold evils that result from obtaining our first impressions 
of life from works of romance, in which heroes throw about 
purses of gold as though it were literally trash, and heroines 
suffer martyrdom for their constancy ; or, in which highwaymen 
are extolled as models of honor, and licentious profligates are 
invested with all the attractions of refinement. Works in which 
religion is shown only in the light of ridicule, and the subtle 
poison of infidelity is instilled into the mind in the guise of 
religion. 



14 



Ruin and Restoration. 



It is not denied that there are works of fiction which consti- 
tute a part of our standard literature, and which are not ouly 
safe, but in many respects profitable, to thoss whose education 
is advanced, and who have acquired some knowledge of life 
from experience. But these are not the works sought and 
devoured by the juvenile novel reader, who requires something 
that feeds an imagination already too exuberant. Tales of love 
and murder, or both, are such as charm the minds of the 
young. It is evident that characters and opinions formed under 
such tutelage as this, cannot recover from its influence, until 
experience has shown how utterly false these notions are, and 
how different the world of romance is from the world of reality. 
The young lady who has obtained her notions of married life 
from the heroines of romance, is poorly qualified to fill the place 
of wife and mother. And most likely her husband will be 
driven to evil practices and evil associates, because she prefers 
to imagine herself a heroine, or to spend her time poring over 
a silly novel, to making her house comfortable and herself 
agreeable. 

Perhaps young ladies will think that I am traveling out of 
the record, as the lawyers say, but I cannot forbear here re- 
marking, that a husband is eminently a domestic animal ; and 
nothing will make him so tame, so gentle, and so docile, as a 
good supper, a pleasant, clean fireside, with an easy chair on 
one hand, and an agreeable wife on the other. This will do 
more in securing any little private end of their own, than all 
the eloquence of a tongue as gifted as the renowned Mrs. 
Caudle, or that all the tears and hysterics, which are made so 
effective in novels. But if young ladies prefer to imbue their 
minds with all the silly trash uttered by feeble-minded men 
and romantic spinsters, to learning how to perform the practical 
duties of their position, they will suffer the consequences. A 
man of sense marries for the comforts of a home, and the 
society of a companion who will make herself agreeable ; and 
if disappointed in this, he leels that all which renders life 
valuable, is denied him. And when, from any cause, home 
ceases to be attractive to a man, his ruin is almost certain. 



Waywaedness op Youth. 



15 



The influence which these false impressions have, in deter- 
mining the character and fate of the youth of both sexes, is 
far greater than is generally imagined. They form the taste 
and mental habits of thousands, who are insensible of it them- 
selves ; and, for this reason, the extent of the injury can never 
be appreciated. After the mental habits are formed, and expe- 
rience is gained, the danger from this source is comparatively 
trifling. But before the character is confirmed, and while the 
mind is profoundly ignorant of the world and the realities of 
life, then to have it preoccupied with these false impressions is 
almost necessarily fatal to its sound development. 

III. Another cause of waywardness is A mistaken view of 
happiness. 

It takes a long experience of the deceitfulness of earthly 
pleasure to convince the mind that true happiness consists more 
in contentment with our present condition, than in anticipations 
that perhaps will never be realized. Youth is the period when 
the imagination is most active ; and it is natural for the young 
mind to picture scenes of pleasure from the possession of wealth, 
which are dissipated when the object is attained. We can learn, 
by experience only, that whatever may be the degree of our 
success, there are as many new wants created by a change of 
circumstances, as those that sufficed to fill the imagination 
of youth ; and that the craving of the soul for happiness is just 
as far from being allayed. It is hard, nay almost impossible, to 
convince the young that what we tell them, and what the Word 
of Grod tells them, of the nature of earthly hopes and earthly joys 
is true. They imagine, that, because we have lost some of the 
susceptibilities of youth for this kind of pleasure, we have 
become misanthropic .and uncharitable in our feelings toward 
them. Suppose that we admit the charge to be true, what does 
it prove, except that by a greater experience we have discovered 
their true nature and influence, and that if we have drank of 
the cup of pleasure we have also tasted its dregs. If these 
things were capable of affording substantial happiness, we should 
never have tired of them ; for, to happiness we all aspire. This 
fact, then, is of itself equal to a volume of instruction upon a 



16 



Ruin and Restoration. 



subject that cannot be learned except by experience. The 
young know, from their own innate desires, what kind of plea- 
sure is most congenial to their tastes ; but they do not know, 
from this source, the unhappy consequences which are snre to 
follow indulgence. From the joyousness of their own hearts 
they are disposed to enter upon the pleasures of the world with 
a wild recklessness of consequences, until, by their own expe- 
rience, they learn that 

" Each pleasure hath its poison too, 
And every sweet a snare." 

If they would be warned by the observation and experience 
of others, many hours of remorse and many tears .of anguish 
would be averted ; for there is a happiness in the world that 
brings no remorse, to be obtained only by a life of virtue. 

But let us notice the next step in the career of this prodigal 
son. He was in the pursuit of happiness; and, as I have 
already remarked, his ideas on this subject, and those of his 
father, probably did not correspond; therefore, he resolved to 
remove himself to such a distance as would enable him to 
pursue his own course, without fear or restraint. At the present 
day it is nothing uncommon, or censurable, for young men to 
leave their native town or state, to find in newer or more enter- 
prising settlements those facilities for business which cannot be 
obtained elsewhere. This, then, of itself, is no evidence of a 
wrong state of heart ; on the contrary, it is often indicative of 
an energetic and enterprising spirit. But in the country in 
which he lived, the case was different. Then, as they do now, 
families and tribes resided together, or contiguous to each other ; 
and the father was respected by children and children's children 
as the patriarchal head : therefore, in this particular case, we 
can form no more charitable conclusion than that his object in 
removing to a far country was to break away, not only from his 
parent, but from all the social influences which surrounded 
him. 

His father appears to have been a man of wealth and influ- 
ence, probably a man of piety ; and the situation of the son was 
relatively, much like that of a young man at the present day, 



Waywardness op Youth. 



17 



who has been educated in the Sabbath school and habitually 
brought to the sanctuary ; and who knows, that wherever 
he goes, or whatever he does, there is one who is observing 
all his course with the deepest interest. Such might have 
been the condition of this youth, so far as circumstances will 
allow of a parallel. The restraints of home were irksome to 
him ; he longed for different associaties and for pleasures of a 
different character from those which he had found under his 
father's roof; consequently, the first step which he took in 
the accomplishment of his end was the one already noticed, 
breaking away from these restraints. The second, and the 
determining one which sealed his fate, was the character of 
the associations that he formed. This, I repeat, was the first 
fatal step that ensured his ruin. Previous errors might have 
been retrieved. Whatever mischief had been done, might 
have been undone. But, when he threw himself into the 
society of the vile and abandoned, he committed an error 
from which there was no recovery. Young men when they 
choose their associates, have very little idea of the influence 
which these will have upon their future career. When an 
individual enters a new place, especially if it be a large city, 
without acquaintances, and without even a character as yet 
established, it requires time and patience to gain access to 
refined circles. There is an ordeal or probationary state, 
through which he must pass, before the doors of good society 
will be thrown open to him. It is not those whose acquaint- 
ance is most accessible, whose friendship is most to be desired ; 
on the contrary, we should regard them with suspicion ; for 
the society of the low and vicious is always easy of access; 
while the doors of the virtuous, the educated and refined, 
sometimes seem literally barred against the young man who is 
struggling with the world single handed. And often, under 
such circumstances, he feels himself alone in the great world 
of excitement. He thinks of the society of home, the associates 
of his youth, and there comes over his spirit a feeling of 
solitariness and sadness which disposes him to receive with 
gratitude, the advances of almost any one, who assumes the 
3 



18 



Ruin and Restoration. 



appearance of friendship. Thus a powerful temptation, to one 
of strong social feelings, is placed before him to form associa- 
tions which will most certainly exclude him from the society 
that he desires. If he yields to this temptation, he becomes 
known, if known at all, as one of that class ; for it is an old 
maxim that, " a man is known by the company he keeps ; " 
hence, by a self-created necessity, he is thrown out of the pale 
of good society, and into that of the low and profligate. Men 
will not take a viper into their bosoms, nor anything that comes 
from its vile nest ; nor will they introduce a profligate young 
man, or one who keeps company with profligates, into their 
family circles. 

Young men often mistake the views and motives of those 
who seem to be so exclusive in their habits. They imagine 
that it is the influence of pride ; when in fact it is only a barrier 
or safeguard, which the virtuous must erect and guard with 
jealous care, if they would preserve themselves and their 
families from the blighting influence of vice. For it will creep 
even into the sacred precincts of the family circle, sometimes 
withering by its touch, the fairest rose that blossoms there. 
And often under the external appearance of haughtiness and 
pride, there is as much real kindness, and far more refinement 
than you will find in the breast of the low and vulgar, to say 
nothing of the vicious. Education and habits have much to 
do in regulating the mode in which the feelings are expressed, 
and a familiar address that dispenses with all ceremony, while 
it is a sure indication of vulgarity, is not always indicative of 
better feelings than those that are expressed in a more formal 
and polished manner. 

There is, it is true, in all large places, a society based upon 
wealth, where the only recommendation necessary is money; 
but this is not the kind that a young man commencing life, 
and dependent -upon his own resources, should seek. If he 
does, he will probably be ruined by extravagance. There is 
also a society composed of the virtuous, the educated, and of 
those who are rich enough to command all the elegancies that 
characterize refined society anywhere, which is accessible to 



Waywardness of Youth. 



19 



any young man of character who has education and refinement 
enough to appreciate its worth. And associations of this kind 
will materially advance a young man's prospects in life. His 
rule should be to form no connections, and to have no associates, 
until he can make those that will be of advantage to him. 

If the influence of bad associates extended no further than 
to exclude the individual from good society, this, though a 
great misfortune, might not be fatal, but its danger and its 
curse is, its corrupting influence upon the mind and heart 
"Can a man touch pitch and not be defiled?" Or, can he 
live in contact with vice without becoming vicious himself? 
If he should attempt to show any regard for the principles of 
virtue which may have been instilled into the mind in child- 
hood, this will only expose him to the jest and ridicule of his 
companions. Therefore, when a youth deliberately chooses 
his companions among the profligate, he may rest assured 
that his career will be downward until his character is on a 
par with theirs ; they will give him no peace until they have 
succeeded in making him just as vile, as reckless, and as 
abandoned, in every way, as they are. 

It is sometimes thought that we slander the devil when we 
represent him as a malignant spirit, seeking to destroy the 
souls of men, merely for the gratification of seeing them as 
miserable as he is. But why should we be incredulous upon 
this point, when we find men, or rather devils incarnate, who 
are actively engaged in this unholy work, and who are 
continually leading the artless and inexperienced into the 
snares of vice, that they may enjoy a hellish triumph in their 
ruin? This is a dark feature of human nature, but it is 
nevertheless true. And when a parent discovers that his child 
is forming such associations, he may rest assured that if he 
does not interpose his authority to dissolve the charm, the 
ruin of his child is inevitable. > Perhaps the greatest obstacle 
in the way of the conversion of youth, the thing that stands 
before them most prominently and palpably, is the fear of 
ridicule from ungodly companions. Often does the word and 
the spirit of God arrest them in the midst of their career of 



20 



Ruin and Restoration. 



folly, and the mind is disposed seriously to meditate upon 
death, and eternity ; but the fear of man has a more powerful 
influence over their hearts than the fear of God. 

I have now followed the course of this young man, so far 
as to see him fairly embarked upon his career. I have noticed 
the reasons and motives which probably determined his actions, 
and here I shall leave him, for the present, with the great world 
of pleasure before him, and innocence, virtue and happiness 
behind. Though the course of my remarks may have 
appeared somewhat digressive, yet they have been made with 
strict reference to the condition of those who, like him, are 
entering upon that period of life when they must act for 
themselves, and where a false movement or a mistaken view 
of things may entail lasting sorrow. I have not charged 
waywardness upon the young as something which is indicative 
of an extraordinary degree of depravity; but as something 
which naturally grows out of their circumstances. They 
cannot know the world as those who have had years of 
experience, and it is natural for them to look upon the best 
side of human nature ; for ingenuousness is a characteristic of 
youth. Nor is it uncommon for parents to give their children 
advantages of education which they have not enjoyed them- 
selves ; so that, intellectually, the child may be superior to the 
parent. But parents always possess one kind of knowledge 
which the child cannot attain, except by equal age and 
experience. This is a knowledge of men and the world ; there- 
fore, when they counsel the young in relation to the dangers 
and temptations which they will encounter, it becomes them to 
heed their admonition; for, however the external face of 
society may change, human nature never changes. It is the 
same now as it was when our fathers were young. 

Why not then be admonished by those who have tried the 
world, and found it, as the pen of the wise man has written, 
" Vanity and vexation of spirit," and seek that which brings 
present peace to the soul, and secures its happiness when the 
world, with all its attractions, shall have passed away forever ? 
You may imagine that you can possess both the world and 



Waywardness of Youth. 



21 



heaven ; and that when you have indulged in pleasure and in 
sin until the disabilities of age are creeping upon you, then 
you will turn your thoughts toward heaven. But you cannot 
deceive or trifle with God. He may cut you down in the 
midst of your career, or he may leave you to mourn over a 
life wasted, with all the infirmities of age oppressing the 
body, the grave yawning before you, and a heart as callous 
and unimpressible as the granite rock. 



II. DANCING. 



AND NOT MANY DATS AFTER, THE YOUNGER SON GATHERED ALL TOGETHER, AND TOOK HIS 
JOURNEY INTO A EAR COUNTRY, AND THERE WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE WITH RIOTOUS 

living. — Luke xv : 13. 

In a former lecture upon this part of the parable, we left 
the subject of it where he had just entered upon his career of 
pleasure. It was stated that the unhappy consequences 
which followed, and which we are yet to consider, were but 
the inevitable result of the associations that he had formed. 
Although the narrative is too concise to specify all the parti- 
culars of his guilty career, yet there are many things, which 
are necessarily embraced in the term employed, as descriptive 
of his manner of life. When we are told that he "wasted 
his substance with riotous living," we are at no loss to con- 
jecture who his associates were; or what were some of the 
specific acts of folly of which he was guilty. Besides, the 
elder son, in his remonstrance with his father, says, that he 
had "devoured his living with harlots!" This, then, is 
enough to assure us that he was guilty of all those evil prac- 
tices which are naturally associated together, and which are 
generally included in a life of dissipation. It will be doing 
no violence to my subject, therefore, if, when considering 
what belongs to riotous living, we notice those specific acts 
of folly and sin which are so often the cause of ruin to the 
young. 

All animated nature proclaims that youth is the season of 
mirth and enjoyment. The young of every grade and class 
delight the eye, by their gambols ; nor is man with his superi- 
ority of intellect exempt from those laws which are common to 
all forms of organized life. This is a period when care has not 
wrinkled the brow; nor disappointment cankered the heart; 



Dancing. 



23 



envy and jealousy have not soured the temper, nor infirmity 
enervated the body ; but with the flush of health siifYusing the 
cheek, and joy overflowing the heart, it is but natural for this 
excess of animal spirits to seek some vent. Nor is it always 
safe to suppress, by too great austerity, these feelings of our 
nature, or to confine them, by mere arbitrary restriction, lest 
they engender in the heart a precocious development of deep 
and malignant passions. Care sits as unseemly on the youthful 
brow, as does the artificial flush of youth upon the wrinkled 
cheek of age. It has been remarked of some men that they 
never were children ; or that, they never possessed any of the 
simplicity and ingenuousness of childhood, nor any taste for its 
innocent amusements. And their history has proved them 
deep, designing and cruel. 

The pen of inspiration writes, " Eejoice, young man, in thy 
youth ; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, 
and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine 
eyes ; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring 
thee into judgment." The fact then, that youth is a season of 
peculiar enjoyment, will not justify all those excesses which are 
committed under the guidance, and by the promptings of a 
depraved nature ; but pn the contrary, these will form a part 
of that terrible reckoning which we must meet at the day of 
judgment. Therefore, it is of first importance for us to dis-^ 
criminate between those pleasures which are innocent in 
themselves, and which leave no sting in the conscience ; and 
those that will be a subject of regret, and a ground of condem- 
nation at the tribunal of Heaven. Perhaps there is no amuse- 
ment peculiar to youth upon which there exises a greater 
diversity of opinion than upon dancing. For this reason I 
shall endeavor to discuss the subject thoroughly; and, divested 
of all prejudice, to set forth its true character and tendency. 

The opinions of the great mass of society appear to be formed 
more from education or prejudice, than from a clear perception 
of the ground upon which an opinion should be based. With 
some, it is enough to know that it is an amusement in which 
they were not permitted to indulge while they were young; 



24 



Ruin and Restokation. 



moreover it may be forbidden, by the discipline of the church 
in which they were reared, therefore it must be sinful. 

While others, who esteem the opinion of their parents 
equally sacred, were not only permitted, but required ; to make 
it a part of their education. The dancing-school ranked with 
the day-school, and claimed its share of their time ; and if not 
directly sanctioned by the church, it was at least permitted ; 
and, naturally enough, they consider their church as good 
authority as any other. 

We perceive, then, that this is a subject upon which there is 
a diversity of opinion even among evangelical churches ; some 
condemning it under all circumstances, and inflicting discipline 
for every infraction ; while others leave it for every one to settle 
with his own conscience. It can hardly be expected, therefore, 
that we should be able to reconcile all the differences of opinion, 
that exist among virtuous and even Christian people. All that 
can be done, and all that I shall attempt is, to give my own 
opinions and the reasons upon which they are based. 

To arrive at any satisfactory result, there is one distinction 
which must be clearly understood, and kept before the mind, 
else I shall be entirely misapprehended. It is a distinction 
between things that are sinful in themselves and things which 
are made sinful by their attending circumstances and conse- 
quences. A thing that is sinful in itself, such as profanity, 
stealing, theft, murder or any act expressly forbidden by God, 
is sinful under all circumstances and in all places. It can never 
be practised without incurring guilt. A thing that is made 
sinful by its attending circumstances or consequences, may not 
be sinful when divorced from them, for they are what determine 
its character. For example, if I discharge a pistol at some 
inanimate object, as a tree or a board, the act is not sinful, 
because there are no evil consequences ; but if I discharge that 
pistol into the breast of a man, or into a crowd of human 
beings, I am at heart and by law a murderer ; because there 
are fatal consequences resulting from the act. Now the act in 
both cases is the same, but its nature widely different. So of 
the subject before us. Dancing, certainly, is nowhere forbid- 



Dancing. 



25 



den in the Word of Grod, as a specific act; therefore, when 
sinful, it is made so by attending circumstances, by excesses, 
by its connections and association, and by its influence upon 
the mind and heart. 

When I have conceded this point, that the Bible nowhere 
expressly forbids the practice, I have conceded all that can be 
claimed by its advocates ; while I hold, on the other hand, that 
the whole tenor of inspired teaching is against it, in the manner 
in which it is generally practised. But as great stress is some- 
times laid upon the fact that, while dancing is often referred to 
in the Scriptures, it is nowhere condemned, it is necessary that 
I should consider the Bible argument, and show what it does 
say upon the subject. 

Dancing is of very early origin. It is often mentioned, both 
in sacred and secular history, as a mode of expressing joy. The 
original Hebrew word which we translate to dance, simply means 
leap for joy. If we were to substitute this translation in all 
those places where it occurs in Hebrew writing, it would sim- 
plify the argument amazingly; for I imagine that it would 
be extremely difficult to make such an interpretation com- 
prehend a cotillion or a polka. Besides, both among the 
Jews and the idolatrous nations where it was practised, it was 
strictly a religious rite, and practised in connection with other 
religious ceremonies. If the Bible refers to or countenances 
dancing at all, of course it is such dancing as was then practised ; 
therefore, any argument, based upon these Scripture expressions, 
must be fallacious. If we take the Bible for authority, we must 
dance as the Bible prescribes. In after years, and probably 
when this parable was written, dancing had become secularized, 
and constituted, as it now does, a popular amusement ; there- 
fore, we find very little reference to it in the New Testament ; 
certainly it is nowhere commended, nor are any cases mentioned 
where it was practised by those whose characters are worthy of 
our imitation. There are but two instances given in the whole 
of the New Testament, and the characters of those who prac- 
tised it I shall briefly notice. 
4 



26 



Ruin and Restokation. 



One occurs in the parable which we are considering, where it 
is said that the elder son, when he came from the field, as he 
drew nigh to the house, heard music and dancing. Now all 
that we can say in relation to this is, that the whole scene is a 
fiction, and this incident is introduced merely for the sake of 
illustrating the joy which was felt by the entire household upon 
the occasion ; and gives no more sanction to the practice than it 
does to the conduct of the elder brother, who is represented as 
being angry and refusing to go in. This incident, if it proves 
anything, only shows that dancing was a mode of celebrating a 
joyful event. But are we to argue that because it was a popu- 
lar amusement in Scripture times, and is referred to as such, 
therefore it has the authority of Scripture ? This kind of rea- 
soning would sanction polygamy, and many other practices 
that would not be tolerated for a moment. Another case 
where dancing is mentioned, is where the daughter of Herodias 
appeared before Herod, and by her graceful and lascivious 
movements, so captivated the drunken, silly monarch, that he 
promised her anything that she should ask, even to the half of 
his kingdom. The vain and heartless lady, instigated by her 
mother, demanded nothing less than the bloody head of one of 
God's saints. And here you have the character of the only 
real dancer mentioned in the New Testament. "We should 
judge from this incident, that religion and dancing were not 
quite so harmonious as many would have us believe. All that 
we derive from the Scriptures is, that dancing was practised 
among the Jews as a religious ceremony ; that at a later period 
it was sometimes practised in families, to celebrate a joyful 
event ; and finally, that it was also an accomplishment by which 
vile courtesans pandered to the base passions of wicked rulers. 
Now if any one can frame an argument from this, to justify all 
the excesses which characterize modern dancing, they must 
possess a degree of ingenuity totally beyond my comprehension. 
As well might we argue, that, because Paul recommended to 
Timothy, for the benefit of a weak stomach, a little of the pure 
wine then in use, therefore, a man is justified in destroying him- 
self by pouring into his system that vile decoction which passes 



Dancing. 



27 



under the name of wine at the present day. If the drunkard 
were to offer such an argument, as a justification for his course, 
there would be no difficulty in perceiving its fallacy. If we 
drink wine merely to show our veneration for the Scriptures, 
we must use that kind, and under those circumstances which 
the Scriptures prescribe. So if we dance, from our respect to 
Scripture examples, we must dance as they did, and with all 
those restrictions respecting excesses which the Bible gives. 

The truth of the matter is, that the moment you place the 
amusement under proper restraint, it loses most of its attrac- 
tions. The fascination of dancing depends, not so much upon 
its graceful movements, as the dissipation which generally 
accompanies it. If it be a necessary accomplishment to give 
exercise to the body and grace to the manners, why not prac- 
tice it by day rather than by night, and under the eye of the 
parent, in the same manner that other accomplishments are 
attained? This, while it would secure all the advantages 
claimed for it as a part of education, would remove all the 
objections as a means of dissipation. But, as I have already 
hinted, it is the excitement of midnight revelry, and the aban- 
donment of the whole soul to excess of pleasure, that consti- 
tutes its charm, as well as its danger. For this reason, in the 
discussion of a subject like the present, we cannot confine 
ourselves to the mere abstract question, but it must be con- 
sidered in connection with its concomitants, and in view of its 
practical tendencies. 

L One of the most important of these is its influence 

UPON THE HEALTH. 

Balls and cotillion parties are amusements peculiar to the 
winter months. The dresses prescribed for such occasions are 
of the thinnest texture, such as are never worn out of the 
ball room except in the heat of summer. To compensate for 
this, the rooms are generally heated to a temperature above 
that of an ordinary room, such as the system is accustomed to, 
at that season of the year. The exercise is often of a violent 
character, continued under the excitement of music, until the 



28 



Ruin and Restoration. 



lungs are panting, the heart fluttering, and the perspiration 
reeking from every pore of the skin. Many young ladies, of 
delicate constitution, have been carried fainting from exhaus- 
tion, to the open air, where the thermometer was at zero. And 
many others have rushed out thoughtlessly, to refresh them- 
selves with a few breaths in an ' uncontaminated atmosphere ; 
and this process of heating and cooling suddenly, so as to be 
ready for the next figure, is alternated, from early evening, 
through the hours of midnight, until day. 

Add to this an unseasonable supper ; in many cases with the 
adjuvant of a little wine, or cordial, to sustain the flagging 
spirits, and thus the excitement continues until, from very 
exhaustion, it loses its charm. The eyelids begin to droop, 
and jaded nature asserts her prerogatives in no questionable 
tokens. 

I appeal to those who are familiar with these scenes, to know 
if I have misstated or over-colored the case. We have all 
been young once, and there are few who have not seen the 
inside of a ball room ; both when the brilliant light of the 
chandeliers added new lustre to beauty, and when the pale 
rays of morning revealed the haggard countenance, and the 
rich curls, drawn out into long, lank tresses, more like the 
locks of a mermaid than of a belle. And I appeal to your 
sober judgment to decide, whether such dissipation of body is 
safe for any ; but especially for a fair and fragile form, almost 
balancing between health and incipient disease, where one 
imprudent act may turn the scale and seal the fate. 

Young ladies generally place a light estimate upon health, 
and often, if left to themselves, they will barter it for a 
momentary pleasure. And sometimes mothers are inconsider- 
ate enough to permit them to expose their persons in a way 
both unbecoming and dangerous. Fashion, and not health, 
prescribes the rule, and the dictate of fashion must be obeyed, 
even though life be the forfeit. 

Occasionally the mother will venture a feeble remonstrance 
against the bare neck, bare arms and tissue dress, but the 
daughter assures her that she is perfectly warm; and the 



Dancing. 



29 



mother draws her thick woolen shawl around her own shivering 
form, moves her chair up nearer the fire and appears satisfied. 
Strange that there should be such a difference between the ani- 
mal temperature of a mother and her daughter. Thus she sends 
forth the child of her love to the midnight revel. Perhaps in 
the course of a few weeks — it may be longer — she notices a 
slight cough, too trifling to excite particular attention. Some 
favorite domestic remedy is administered, with the expectation 
that it will be easily subdued ; but months glide by and still 
the cough remains, and she wonders where her child has taken 
such an obstinate cold. Soon the deep, round flush shows its 
well defined lines upon her cheek, pain darts through her side, 
and the cough deepens until it assumes those hoarse, sepulchral 
tones which tell of wasted lungs. Now the mother's fears are 
thoroughly aroused. She takes her daughter to the springs and 
to the seashore ; she gives her the benefit of the clear mountain 
air and of the fog of the valley. She places her in charge of 
one who tortures her with blisters and reduces her by bleeding ; 
of another who wraps her debilitated, wasted, bloodless form in 
cold, wet sheets ; as though the object was to extinguish the 
little spark of life that remained. But all in vain ; and at last 
she turns her face homeward with the sad conviction that she is 
bringing her child back to die. And now see that mother 
watching the bed of her suffering daughter. Every cough sends 
a pang to her heart. Every groan finds a sympathetic response. 
Long days and anxious nights are hers, and often does she won- 
der why one so fair and promising should be cut down in the 
bloom of youth. The ways of God seem a deep mystery to 
her. Ah ! she little thinks that when she was decking her child 
for the ball room she was putting garlands on the brow of a 
new victim to be sacrificed at the shrine of fashion. But if the 
various members of that suffering system could speak for them- 
selves they would tell a tale that would chill her with horror. 
The lungs, the heart, the brain, the stomach, the skin would 
combine their testimony that they resisted till they could endure 
no longer, and then those seeds of disease and death were sown 
which no human art could eradicate. True, these fatal conse- 



30 



Ruin and Restoration. 



quences do not always follow, but if all the facts could be 
known, and the connection of the one with the other traced, we 
should learn that many an untimely death has been the result 
of these practices. What other consequences can be anticipated 
from such excesses, and what parent can expect prudence and 
moderation in a child placed amid such temptations ? I have 
spoken at length upon this branch of the subject, because it is 
one that is often overlooked, or passed with a brief comment. 
Yet it is an argument that appeals directly to our affections and 
our duty as parents — a duty much too lightly esteemed, but 
which is no less imperative. 

EL But we must not overlook the fact that it is intellect 
which elevates man above all the mere animal tribes. It is the 
soul, created in the image of God, that makes him a being but 
little lower than the angels, and susceptible of elevation to com- 
munion with Grod and companionship with angelic beings. 
What then can bear any comparison to the importance of culti- 
vating his superior nature ? And how should we estimate these 
things which directly conflict with this end ? I need but refer 
to it as a well known truth, that the pleasures of the dance and 
the gay assembly at once dissipate the mind and disqualify it 
for application or improvement. Books may be laid aside and 
teachers discharged when the education of the head comes in 
conflict with that of the heels ; for wherever the body may be 
the young mind is reveling in day-dreams of pleasure. And 
often does the poor teacher bear the weight of a parent's cen- 
sure, when the parent himself has taken the surest method of 
nullifying every effort on his part. And often does he depre- 
cate that folly which will permit the intellect to run to waste, 
merely for the sake of a few accomplishments that may be 
attained with equal certainty in another way. What bodily 
attitudes will supply the defects of education, and what man- 
nerism of the ball room will compare with that grace and intel- 
ligence which proceed from the emotions of a good heart and 
an accomplished mind ? Let a child possess these and they will 
impart a charm to every word and grace to every act. 



Dancing. 



31 



III. Youth is not only the season for mental cultivation, but 
for receiving- those impressions that will remain stamped 
indelibly upon the soul. It is then that the sympathies of the 
heart are easily touched, and the character, in a great degree, 
determined. Therefore, whatever indisposes the mind for seri- 
ous contemplation, must prove of lasting injury. It is because 
of the acknowledged influence of the ball room, that they are 
an object of such dread to the minister of the Gospel. He 
knows that the mind, engrossed with these follies, is perfectly 
insensible to any permanent impressions of truth, and though 
he may be successful in arousing the mind, so that the indivi- 
dual shall begin to think of God and of eternity, and he may 
even see the good seed taking root in the heart ; yet one night 
of dissipation will be sure to blast this cherished expectation, 
and leave the soul as barren as a rock. Often has the work of 
years of patient watching, with hope, been thus destroyed in a 
moment. And often does he see those, of whom he had reason 
to hope better things, allured from the fold of the Shepherd, 
back into the world where they have ceased to give any evi- 
dence of a renewed heart, merely because they had not strength 
of principle enough to resist the first advance of the tempter. 

There are certain things so incompatible with each other, 
that you will never find them existing in the same breast, and 
we are to judge of their nature, by the influence which they 
have upon the heart as well as the life; indeed the life is only 
the external manifestation of the existing state of the heart. 
Whether dancing be a safe amusement for Christians, we can 
easily determine by referring to a few facts, that are too obvious 
to be disputed. 

1. The dancing Christian is not a praying Christian. The 
ball room and the prayer meeting are never frequented by the 
same individual. I have known many young converts who 
have never been seen in the prayer meeting after they had 
attended a single dance. 

2. The dancing Christian is not a working Christian. How 
can such a person labor in the vineyard of God, warning others 
of the danger of living only for this world, when, by his con- 



32 



Ruin and Restoration. 



duct, he shows the same devotion to its pleasures, as do the 
mere votaries of pleasure ? 

3. The dancing Christian has no influence as a Christian. 
He may profess all the love of a John, and exhibit all the zeal 
of a Paul ; but it will make no impression on others. Whether 
their course be right or wrong, there is, in the eyes of the 
world, a glaring inconsistency between their profession and 
their conduct, which no ingenuity or sophistry can reconcile. 

4. The dancing Christian is a positive injury to the Church. 
The world judges an entire church, and sometimes religion 
itself, by the character of its members. And when a disciple 
of Christ brings discredit upon himself, he injures all who are 
associated with him One withered, gangrenous limb taints a 
whole system. 

5. The dancing Christian encourages others in sin. Some- 
times even the worldly feel that there is something in their 
course of life which is not right, and are led to doubt the 
propriety of these excesses. But the presence in the ball room 
of one of Christ's representatives gives it the sanction of reli- 
gion, and they naturally think that if it will do for Christians, 
it will do for them ; thus, the voice of an awakened conscience 
is stifled by one of Christ's professed friends. 

If these things are true, if it be a fact that this amusement 
breaks up the communion of the soul with Grod, disqualifies a 
person from laboring for Christ, destroys the influence of Chris- 
tian character, and not only this, but renders the individual 
a burden upon the church, palsying its energies and strengthen- 
ing the hands of the vain and pleasure-loving multitude, can 
there be a doubt whether it be a proper amusement for a pro- 
fessing Christian, of one whose duty it is to " avoid the very 
appearance of evil." These facts are assumed because they are 
too obvious to require proof. If proof were necessary, I might 
summon the combined testimony of every minister and every 
church in the land. If this be an amusement proper for one 
member of a church, it is proper for all, and if it is proper for a 
whole church, it is proper for its pastor ; and if it is proper for 



Dancing. 



33 



him, it is proper for a Synod, or a Conference, or a General 
Assembly. 

Let me suppose, for a moment, that your pastor were to join 
you, pleasure -loving professor, and were to lead in the dance, 
and preside at the supper, participating in all the wild enthu- 
siasm of the occasion; would you respect him longer as a 
religious teacher? Would you not, in his case, perceive that 
there was a strange inconsistency between his conduct and his 
profession ; and if you really loved him, would you not seek to 
lead him aside, and beg of him not to destroy himself by such 
an act of folly ? Why should he not then be equally candid 
with you ? What is he more than a Christian professor ; and 
what are you, less ? The difference between him and you is 
one of position, and not of obligation. I have taken no vows 
upon me, respecting my private character and deportment, save 
those which I assumed when I entered the Church of Christ, 
and which rest with equal obligation upon every professing 
Christian. And I have yet to learn that the individual who 
received the one talent was not just as responsible for the use 
of that, as he who received five. If, therefore, you would con- 
demn such a course in me, as inconsistent with my profession, 
you write "Mene Tekel" over against yourself. This, I am 
aware, is bringing the argument nearer home than is perhaps 
agreeable. We are more fond of holding such subjects at a 
distance, and viewing them abstractly, than as matters of prac- 
tical importance ; but it is sometimes necessary to extend an 
argument to that point, where its conclusions are so absurd as 
to admit of but one opinion. And here is a point upon the 
subject before us, where, I imagine, our views will all harmo- 
nize. But if the deductions are legitimately drawn, the conclu- 
sion is inevitable. A Synodical Ball, where Doctors of Divinity 
were the managers, and where the choir furnished the music, 
might create something of a sensation in the church and in the 
world ; but if it is a thing consistent with a Christian profession, 
one that the ministers of Christ may sanction in the churches, 
why should they not set the example themselves? For it is a 
part of their duty to be "ensamples unto the flock." Let me 



34 



Ruin and Restoration. 



then, in concluding this subject, appeal to your candid judg- 
ment, and inquire if you can show one valuable purpose which 
these vain amusements serve ? Do they elevate the mind, or 
improve the heart? Do they fortify the soul against those 
trials and afflictions which may befall us in life ; so that it can 
sustain with patient resignation the multiplied evils which 
checker over our path? Do they qualify us for those noble 
pursuits which are the object of our creation? Finally, do they 
produce that happiness which they promise ; or, on the other 
hand, only cheat, and beguile, and delude for a season, and end 
in bitter disappointment ? 

Go ask that young lady, whose eyes sparkled, with delight 
as you saw her moving in the giddy throng, why she is so sad 
and dispirited, when only last night she appeared the gayest of 
the gay ? And if she is candid, she may tell you that she had 
been anticipating that joyous occasion for weeks. It had occu- 
pied her thoughts by day, and her dreams by night. And now 
all had passed away like a rainbow upon a dark cloud, leaving 
nothing but the cloud behind. Perhaps if you could look 
deeper into her heart, you would discover some corroding 
passion, such as envy or jealousy, distilling its poison into her 
soul. Her expected triumph had turned into a defeat. The 
rose had fallen off, and the thorn only is left. The truth is, 
that when we regard the world as one great theatre of pleasure, 
we sadly mistake its true character. From the cradle to the 
grave, life is filled with stern realities ; and if we do not prepare 
ourselves to meet them, they will meet us, and become the 
more overpowering, because they take us by surprise. 

Do not, then, like the infatuated prodigal, who only stands 
as the representative of a large class in society, waste every- 
thing, and destroy yourself for a few days of pleasure. But 
fix definitely in your own minds what is right and what is 
wrong ; and then form the inflexible resolution, to be guided 
by those great principles. Let no persuasion of others, no 
fear of ridicule, no false notions of honor, cause you to swerve 
from that purpose ; and this will prove an anchor to the soul, 
when otherwise your course might be like that of a ship 



Dancing. 



35 



driven by the winds, and carried away by counter currents, 
without anchor to hold, or helm to guide. "Blessed is the 
man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly, nor 
standeth in t^e way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the 
scornful. He shall be like a tree planted by the river of 
water, that bringeth forth its fruit in season ; his leaf also 
shall not wither. And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." 



III. THE THEATRE AND THE STRANGE WOMAN. 



AND THERE WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE WITH RIOTOUS LIVING. — Luke XV '. 13. 

We come, now, to a part of the career of the prodigal over 
which I would fain draw the veil, and leave it for the imagi- 
nation to picture rather than attempt to describe the scenes 
behind the curtain. It is extremely difficult to deal with 
such a subject as the one we are to consider, with sufficient 
definiteness to produce the desired effect, and at the same time 
with that delicacy which it demands. If, in the judgment of 
any, I should err, it will not be from a design to outrage the 
feelings even of the most fastidious, but from a sincere desire 
to present the subject in its true colors, that by being fore- 
warned you may be forearmed. 

" Eiotous living " is a comprehensive phrase. And had we 
no other information respecting the habits of this young man, 
we should naturally include the Theatre and the house of the 
Strange Woman, in the places that he frequented. But the 
parable goes further than merely to hint at his course of life in 
this general way ; and in another verse tells us what he was 
about in that far country where he went ; and how he came to* 
be reduced to such extremity as to be willing to descend to the 
menial occupation of a swineherd. Some may imagine that I 
am putting a forced construction on the parable, when I intro- 
duce him into all those scenes of amusement and dissipation, 
which are the cause of ruin to thousands at the present day ; 
but let us, in imagination, go back and view the circum- 
stances of the case as they appear. Here was a young man of 
ardent imagination, the son of a wealthy proprietor, living 
remote from those temptations which have such a powerful 
attraction to some minds. This appears from the circumstance, 



The Theatre and the Strange Woman. 37 

that the elder brother was laboring in the field, from the fatted 
calf, and many other little things which show that he was 
reared amid rural scenes ; and that what he so ardently desired 
was the excitement and dissipation of city life ; therefore 
when he left his father's roof, his steps were doubtless directed 
to some one of those great cities renowned to the present day 
for their splendor and their profligacy. Places where the 
dance, the theatre, the wine cup and the siren, all combined 
quickly to effect his ruin. What young man in ancient or 
modern times, was ever reduced to such a state of wretched- 
ness as his, except by the combined influence of all this 
machinery of Satan? No one of these alone is powerful 
enough to debase the soul, and exterminate every virtuous 
principle from the heart, for while they only operate upon one 
sense, or upon a single passion at a time, there are counter- 
acting agencies at work, and there is enough of the man left 
to exhibit some of the qualities of manhood. But when this 
awful array of infernal agencies make their combined attack, 
inflaming every passion and paralyzing every virtuous feeling, 
what being possessed of the propensities and infirmities of our 
nature can withstand ? 

Theatres are not an institution of modern invention, but 
they existed long before this parable was written. They were 
the subject of legislation and legal restriction, and sometimes 
of legal prohibition, as far back as the days of Aristotle. 
Undoubtedly this young man, when he arrived at the place of 
his destination, it might have been Athens, or Corinth, with 
his fortune at his own disposal, signalized his advent, as many 
do, at the present day, who visit the great metropolis of our 
land, by attending the theatre. 

But it is not of the theatre as it existed in the days of 
Euripides, of which I wish to speak; though even then it 
was condemned and shunned by the virtuous Socrates. It 
is the theatre as it exists at the present time, with all its 
vulgarity, its indecency, its drunkenness and licentiousness, 
of which I wish to warn you. The modern theatre does not 
hold the same relative position in society, that it did in the 



38 



Ruin and Restoration. 



days of Shakspeare, when first it became a place of popular 
amusement to those speaking the Anglo-Saxon language. 
Then the art of printing was in its infancy ; books were found 
only in the libraries of colleges, or in the possession of the 
learned. Many a bold knight, whose valorous deeds are the 
record of history, could no more read a sentence of English 
than he could decipher an Egyptian hieroglyphic. The great 
mass of the people had no taste for amusements more intellec- 
tual and refined than the bloody tournament, and pastimes 
equally sanguinary, and even more debasing. Boxing, wrest- 
ling, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and similar cruel exhibitions 
were those which delighted the multitude, while the tilting 
match, the race course and the stag hunt were the sports of the 
rich and noble. The drama was then far above the popular 
taste; more refined and chaste in its exhibitions than the 
tastes of the audience, therefore, its tendency was to elevate 
rather than debase. But at the present time, while the public 
mind and taste have been refined to a high degree, by means 
of universal education, the drama itself has sunk far below 
what it was in those days of comparative barbarism ; and there 
have been added to it many things with which it has no natu- 
ral affinity, but which have been devised for the sole purpose 
of enticing the young. Therefore, its tendency is exactly the 
opposite of what it was in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Even 
the plays of Shakspeare, far as they fall below the present 
standard of purity, in many respects, are still too refined and 
moral for the modern stage. Of course the private character 
of the actors corresponds to that of those whom they personify. 

If information is needed upon this point, it can be obtained 
in the records of criminal courts ; where the names and infa- 
mous deeds of some who are flattered and caressed, and upon 
whom the pleasure-loving public have lavished fortunes, stand 
forth with unenviable prominence. There are some, doubtless, 
so little informed upon this subject as to imagine that the per- 
formance upon the stage is what we refer to, when we speak of 
the demoralizing influence of the theatre. Bad as it is, would 
to God that we had nothing worse to reveal ; and that society 



The Theatre and the Strange Woman. 



30 



had no more powerful agent of mischief with which to contend. 
And it may be, that some who have even visited its dress circles, 
and witnessed the acting and dancing, with no other bad effect 
than an occasional application of the handkerchief to the face, 
to hide a mantling blush, think that they have visited the theatre 
and understand its real character and tendency ; whereas they 
have no idea of the scenes that were transpiring within its pol- 
luted walls, while they were engrossed with the performance on 
the stage. 

There is many a marble temple, chaste and imposing without, 
while within are gloomy cells, and from its deep, damp vaults 
goes up continually the sigh of the prisoner ;. many a whitened 
sepulchre, beautiful without, that is filled with dead men's 
bones. If you would know what the building is, you must not 
form your opinion from that which is fitted up expressly to 
please the eye ; but you must go down into its dungeons and 
sepulchres, and see what they contain. So if you would know 
what a theatre is, you must leave your self-respect and your 
reputation at the door, and go up into those dens of Satan, 
where they keep that which will dethrone a man's reason, and 
make him a fit dupe for those harpies who are always hovering 
near, ready to seize their victim when prepared. You must 
mingle with the abandoned creatures who occupy the adjoining 
tier, and hear such impurity of language, such obscenity and 
blasphemy, as you will hear nowhere else this side of hell. 
You must see the artless victim, who, perhaps, for the first time, 
has put himself in the power of the tempter, first inflamed with 
wine, and then led off to the home of her whose "house is the 
way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." True, you 
never beheld these scenes, for you probably went to gratify an 
idle curiosity, and to see only that which it was designed that 
you should witness. Beside, they are all carefully concealed 
from the scrutiny of the female eye ; for custom assigns her a 
place which propriety demands that she should keep ; but with 
the other sex the case is different. The door is open to all who 
wish to enter ; and the grey-headed old sinner, who has left his 
wife and children, and character, in his western home ; and the 



40 



Ruin and Restoration. 



city debauchee, who never had either (especially the latter) ; 
and the country youth, with the down of sixteen on his upper 
lip, all walk up the same broad staircase together, and find a 
hearty welcome. It is not the influence of the stage alone that 
renders the theatre so obnoxious to the virtuous and religious 
portion of society ; but it is the combined machinery of the 
play-house, the ball-room, the grog-shop and the brothel, and its 
superiority to them all, as an engine of Satan for mischief, that 
excites their abhorrence. Here every sense is sated, and every 
passion is inflamed by one overpowering array of appliances. 
The eye is dazzled with tinsel splendor ; the ear is charmed by 
every instrument of music in the hands of skillful artists. 
Here stands the tempter and proffers the cup of enchantment, 
and there the siren, to bear off her dazzled and giddy victim, 
to her house of infamy and ruin. What inexperienced youth 
can withstand such an array of temptation as this ? 

But, perhaps, an apologist will say that the profligate will 
find the means of dissipation. If they are not obtained here, 
they will seek them elsewhere. Yirtuous people can attend the 
theatre without being annoyed by any of these disgusting exhi- 
bitions of depravity. It is only those who are viciously inclined 
that are participators in these scenes of wickedness. And why 
shall the virtuous portion of society be excluded from an inno- 
cent amusement, because some will make it an occasion of 
vicious indulgence. 

The reason is very plain. It is simply because these things 
are so interwoven and blended together, that you cannot sepa- 
rate one from the other; and when you sustain it by your 
countenance and money, you help to support not merely the 
stage, but all that is connected with it. Every parent who goes 
to the theatre declares by this act that he is willing to sustain 
an institution which Satan has devised expressly to ruin his 
children. Every young man who attends the theatre says that 
he is willing to help him to dig the grave of all virtuous prin- 
ciples, and finally to publish his disgrace and ruin to the world. 
And every young lady by this declares that she is willing to 
assist wicked men and abandoned women to ruin her brother, or 



The Theatre and the Strange Woman. 



41 



perhaps one dearer, and to see her own sex degraded below the 
inmates of a Turkish harem. Such is the theatre ! ! with all 
its attractions and all its facilities for destroying the souls and 
bodies of men. An institution which is, and from its enor- 
mous expense must ever remain, a curse peculiar to populous 
towns. We, as a community, are not liable to its temptations, 
nor are our children nightly in danger of being allured within 
its precincts. But at the same time it is probable that many 
of the youth whom I address may see the day when they will 
need all the fortitude and principle they possess to escape its 
snares. For, let a young man imbibe a relish for its demoraliz- 
ing exhibitions, and his moral sense is soon blunted, and ere 
long he will find his money, his character and his occupation 
gone. Sagacious business men will not keep one in their 
employment who frequent these haunts of yice ; because they 
know that such a life cannot be sustained by money honestly 
earned. Often do we read in the newspapers such announce- 
ments as this: "Large embezzlement of silk goods. Mr. S., a 
clerk in the importing house of A. B. & C. D., was this morning 
arrested," &c, and we pass by the paragraph as of too common 
occurrence to excite particular notice. But every case of this 
kind has a history ; and if we could trace out one of these, we 
should perhaps find that the unhappy, and now criminal, young 
man left his home in the country with a father's blessing and a 
mother's tears. The hearts of the household had been glad- 
dened, by hearing that he had obtained a situation, where, with 
application and perseverance, he might hope eventually to rise 
from a clerk to a proprietor. Fond sisters, too, had built their 
castles in the air ; and visions of a splendid mansion, carriages 
and liveried footmen, already occupied their thoughts ; the day 
dream of an ardent imagination. Here, then, are concentrated 
the hopes of a whole family ; but alas, cruelly blasted, hopes, 
hearts and all, crushed forever by the withering blow. 

Let us now go into the prison-house, and ask the poor 
criminal how he came to commit so base a deed, and he may 
tell you that his first, fatal step was that which placed him 
within the doors of the theatre. When the business of the day 
6 



42 



Ruin and Restoration. 



was over, his little room, six stories high, heated by the burning 
sun in midsummer, or its cold, empty grate in winter, was so 
cheerless, that he could not stay there. Where should he go ? 
In all that great city, with its thousands of pleasant family 
circles, there was not one that would bid him welcome. If he 
were to venture to call at the house of his employer, he might 
look coldly upon him, and inquire if he had any business with 
him ; and his daughters would toss their heads and wonder at 
his impertinence. There seemed to be but one resort, the doors 
of the theatre were always open, there he could find amusement 
and associates. Soon he found his scanty salary insufficient to 
sustain these extravagant habits ; but how could he change his 
course ? His little room looked more dreary and desolate than 
ever. He could not abide sitting there alone, without a friend 
or amusement of any kind! The result is what you see. 
Hundreds of young men of promise have thus gone down to 
ruin. 

But there is another view of this subject, which needs a word 
of comment. How are these establishments, demanding such 
an enormous outlay of money, sustained? If the immense 
sums which are annually expended in the city of New York 
alone, to support its theatres and opera houses, could be spread 
before the public, it would astonish even the most credulous. 
Upon this subject, I know of no statistics, or any data, upon 
which an estimate may be based. I can only give a single 
item, and leave you to form your own opinions. In a recent 
newspaper controversy, between the manager of the Italian 
Opera and his principal tenor singer, it appears that the manager 
had paid him between thirty and forty thousand dollars for his 
services during twenty months. That is, the public in one city 
have paid one man a higher salary for singing, that too, in a 
language which few of them understand, than this great nation, 
with its overflowing coffers and immense revenue, pays its 
president. A fit commentary on our national character ; mean, 
where we should be generous, and lavish to profusion where 
we should be close. If one man receives such a compensation, 
what must be the cost of sustaining a single establishment 



The Theatre and the Strange Woman. 43 

of this kind ; singers, dancers, actors, musicians and all ? And 
we may well inquire who it is that pays these enormous sums. 
I answer : First. An ephemeral aristocracy, composed of men 
who once had hard hands and kind hearts, who began life with 
a stock in trade that they could easily transport on a wheel- 
barrow, but who now ride in their carriages, and consider it 
necessary to their newly acquired gentility to own a box in a 
fashionable theatre or opera house. 

Second. There are thousands from the east, west, north and 
south, continually flocking to the city, upon business or plea- 
sure, or both, and who gi ve their dollar nightly at the door of 
the theatre. Many of them are persons of character and 
standing in society, and even in the church, who pay their 
dollar tribute at the contribution box of Satan, for he always 
stands out for the dollar without flinching; but who will 
almost leave the print of their fingers on the quarter they drop 
into the Lord's treasury. 

Third. The class to which the young man referred to 
belongs, those who are on their way to ruin, and had already 
commenced their dishonest and shameful career by plundering 
their employers. 

Fourth. Graceless young profligates, who will spend in a 
few years what it took their fathers a lifetime of unremitting 
exertion and toil to accumulate. 

Fifth. Gamblers, thieves, pickpockets, pimps to brothels, 
all seeking their victims among the rich dupes from the "rural 
districts," who go there with great fat-looking pocket-books, 
and come away without them ; and who often, when the loss 
is not too heavy, will let them go rather than tell how they 
lost them. Many a man would rather abide the loss of a few 
hundred dollars, than to have his name go back to his family 
in the newspaper, coupled with the place and the company in 
which he was robbed. There is many a pocket-book lost that 
is never reported at the police office, nor advertised in the 
newspapers. 

This is the way that this mighty monster, who sucks the 
very blood of society, is fed and fattened. He swallows up, 



44 



Ruin and Restoration. 



in his capacious maw, the overflowing wealth of the million- 
aire, and the ill-gotten gains of the robber and gambler. The 
high and the low, the respectable and the most degraded out- 
cast, all pay their tribute to his support. He is sustained by 
those who 'should be the first to enter upon a war of exter- 
mination against him; those whom he robs of children, bro- 
thers, lovers and husbands. 

Many have never viewed this subject in its true aspect, 
because they are too far removed from its influence to see the 
extent of the mischief. But it is well to have our opinions 
fixed upon a subject so prolific of crime and misery that we 
may be prepared to resist temptation when it comes. 

Perhaps some of you may ere long be placed within the 
sphere of its influence, where you will be assailed, not only 
by this, but by a temptation of a more dangerous character, for 
the play-house and the house of the strange woman, as Solomon 
calls her, are side by side ; and the facilities for entering one 
from the other, as I have already shown, are abundant. The 
young man who comes under this kind of influence, where his 
mind is filled with licentious thoughts, his heart corrupted by 
base passions, and whose associates are profligate men and 
abandoned women, is ruined to a certainty. Nothing but 
Almighty grace can save him ; and there is little hope of his 
seeking that. It is what made such an utter wreck of the 
young prodigal ; and has made a wreck of the souls and bodies 
of many stronger men than he. How then shall the young 
fortify their hearts so as to secure themselves against such 
influences. 

Aside from good principles, deeply planted in the soul, I 
know of no means so effective as the society of virtuous and 
intelligent females. This exerts a most happy influence upon 
the character of those whom nature has made of a sterner 
mould It refines the feelings, polishes the manners, and 
instills chaste and pure sentiments in the heart. The young 
man who associates in this kind of society, feels that he has a 
character to maintain, and with it he possesses a degree of self- 
respect, and respect for others, that operates continually upon 



The Theatee and the Strange Woman. 



45 



his mind, as a counteracting agent. It may be, and often is, 
difficult, as I have already remarked on another occasion, for a 
young man without money, or friends, in a strange city, to gain 
access to the kind of society that he would choose ; but let him 
keep clear of evil company, and if he cannot have good society, 
bear with the hardships of solitude for a while. Let him make 
his little room look as inviting as possible ; let him get books 
and music, buy himself a fiddle, or a flute, or a guitar, or some 
instrument, to while away the hours of solitude. They will 
cost less than a few nights of dissipation. Let him spend his 
leisure hours in improving his mind, and cultivating his taste, 
and rely upon it they will soon become anything but tedious. 
His employer, too, will note the difference between his appear- 
ance after a good night's rest, with an easy conscience, and that 
of one who has spent his night in debauchery, and who comes 
to his business with inflamed eyes and languid step ; and he 
will make that discrimination in his future plans. Sooner or 
later the bars will come down, and he will reap the benefit of 
his virtuous life. These are the young men who are selected 
for junior partners, and who are introduced into the domestic 
circle, as sale companions "for daughters, and who sometimes 
form a partnership of another kind without going out of the 
firm. 

"While, it is true, that nothing exerts a better influence upon 
the heart of man than the society of virtuous and intelligent 
females ; so, on the other hand, it is equally true, that there is 
nothing so utterly damning to a man's principles, and character, 
and prospects, as the influence of a vicious and profligate 
woman. She exerts a more blighting influence for evil, than 
the other does for good ; because it is in accordance with a 
depraved appetite. An abandoned woman is the most power- 
ful and intensely wicked creature out of hell ; far worse in her 
character and influence than a profligate man. It may be that 
she only appears so to us, because here is where we are accus- 
tomed, from infancy, to look for refinement and virtue, for the 
same reason that an unsightly daub looks blacker upon a 
polished marble surface. 



46 



Rtjin and Restokation. 



But there is, I imagine, another reason which has an influence 
in sinking her to lower depths of infamy than is ordinarily 
attained by the other sex. When a woman has lost her virtue, 
she has lost every thing dear to her heart. She has thrown 
herself out of society, and obtained a name of infamy that 
nothing can blacken. Profanity, drunkenness, and all the 
catalogue of crimes, do not essentially effect her character, 
because the stains of this vice are so black that no other vices 
can deepen them. Her whole life is devoted to dissipation; 
there is nothing else she can do. But with the other sex the 
case is different. A man has other occupations and pursuits ; 
and, strange to tell, a character left. This is the reason why 
the society of a strange woman should be shunned like a con- 
tagion ; for there is no contagious disease so quickly communi- 
cated to the body, nor so deadly in its influence, as the con- 
taminating influence of this vice upon the heart. That these 
things are so, is owing to a wrong state of public sentiment. 
The woman who has lost her good name is made to feel that 
this is an error which no penitence can retrieve ; a stain that no 
tears can wash away ! But the man who has committed a 
crime, but one degree removed from murder ; that has ruined 
an innocent and confiding creature, who yielded him her affec- 
tion, and then her honor, and filled a house with mourning, is 
still admitted into good society, and flattered and caressed by 
those who should treat him with scorn and contempt. 

The Word of (rod, from which our sentiments should be 
derived, makes no such distinction between the two sexes. And 
why should not a licentious man be excluded from the society 
of the virtuous, as well as a fallen woman ? This is a branch 
of the subject which addresses itself to the female part of the 
community. So long as a reputation, blackened by this vice, 
presents no insurmountable obstacle to the best circles, and to 
the most eligible matrimonial connections, young men will not 
regard it as a great crime against society ? And when I hear a 
young lady express the greatest contempt for one of her own 
sex, who perhaps has yielded to arts more complicated and 
wicked than those by which Satan deceived our common 



The Theatre and the Strange Woman. 41 



mother ; and see her receive with smiles and flattery the author 
of this shame, or one of like stamp, I am led to the irresistible 
conclusion, that this is an affectation of virtue that she does not 
possess in her heart. Bely upon it, that there is an evil here 
that needs correction, and it is for the female part of society to 
apply the remedy, and make the seducer and the profligate of 
the other sex feel that this is a sin against God and society, that 
cannot be overlooked. 

In tracing the history of the prodigal step by step, I have 
been of necessity compelled to follow him into some scenes 
upon which I would have gladly dropped the curtain ; but if 
they are the fruitful cause of ruin to multitudes of young men, 
how can I pass them by? And how can I administer a suffi- 
cient caution without showing the nature of the temptation? 
An evil must be exposed before we can know how to apply the 
remedy. In what I have said upon this subject, I have been 
guided only by a sincere desire to warn the young against the 
array of evil influences which will assail them when they go forth 
into the world, with no other guide than their own inexperience, 
and with no stronger fortification than principles which may be 
as yet but partially formed. And I remark, finally, that whatever 
other means may be adopted, as auxiliaries, there is but one 
course that will prove an effective safeguard, and that is to 
form those principles and adopt those resolutions which are 
commended to you in the Word of God ; and then seek for His 
sustaining grace in enabling you to carry them out. 

Every young man, upon entering life, should adopt a resolu- 
tion upon certain points involving health and character ; that 
he should determine to die rather than yield. And no tempta- 
tion to which he will be exposed demands a more determined 
resolution than this. Satan knew that all his arts and strata- 
gems would have no influence with father Adam if he appeared 
in his own proper person. So he enlisted woman's influence in 
the work, and it was this powerful agency, exerted for evil, that 
caused him to fall. Solomon, too, the wisest and greatest of 
men, was led astray and ruined by the seductions of wicked 
women. And after a somewhat extensive and bitter experience. 



48 



Ruin and Restoration. 



hear his warning voice : " The lips of a strange woman drop as 
a honey-comb, and her mouth is smoother than oil ; but her end 
is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet 
go down to death ; her steps take hold on hell. Remove thy 
feet far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house, lest 
thou give thine honor unto others, and thy years unto the cruel ; 
lest strangers be filled with thy wealth, and thy labors be in the 
house of a stranger, and thou mourn at the last when thy flesh 
and thy body are consumed." He adds : "For at the window 
of my house I looked through the casement, and beheld among 
the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man, 
void of understanding, passing through the street near her corner. 
And he went the way of her house, in the twilight, in the even- 
ing, in the black and dark night : And behold there met him a 
woman with the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart." " With 
her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flatter- 
ing of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, 
as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of 
the stocks ; till a dart strike through his liver, as a bird hasteth 
to a snare and knoweth not that it is for his life. Hearken unto 
me now, therefore, ye children, and attend to the words of 
my mouth. Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray 
in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded ; yea, 
many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way 
to hell, going down to the chambers of death !" 



IV. PROFANE SWEARING. 



AND THERE "WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE WITH RIOTOUS LIVING. — ImTcC XV : 13. 

PitOFANE swearing is not a sin peculiar to any age or country. 
Every Christian nation has its vocabulary of oaths, by which 
they insult the majesty of Heaven, and manifest the universal 
depravity of our race. It is probable, that had it not been so 
distinctly and emphatically prohibited by Grod himself, as a sin 
against his Divine majesty, other forms of expression mighf 
have served, as the language of passion, or as expletives ; but 
because it is a thing forbidden and declared to be peculiarly 
obnoxious to Grod, therefore these are the very terms that the 
depraved mind seizes with the greatest avidity. Why is this 
so, unless it be that the human heart delights in showing its 
hatred to its Maker, and its readiness to insult the Being who, 
of all others, it is most bound to reverence ? 

It is unnecessary for me to attempt anything like an argu- 
ment upon this subject, for it is one that admits of no argument. 
There stands the statute, engraven in the court of Heaven, on 
tables of stone, and given to Moses under the most sublime 
display of Divine glory. " Thou shalt not take the name of 
the Lord thy Grod in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guilt- 
less that taketh his name in vain !" We can see what impor- 
tance Grod attaches to it, from the fact, that when he has given 
us but ten commandments to regulate our intercourse with him, 
and with each other, he has placed this among the first. The 
Saviour, the object of whose mission was to magnify the law 
and make it honorable, has left us his commentary upon the 
subject. "Swear not at all, neither by Heaven, for it is God's 
throne ; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool ; neither by Jeru- 
1 * 



50 



Ruin and Restoration. 



salem, for it is the city of the great King ; neither shalt thou 
swear by thy head, for thou canst not make one hair white or 
black." This passage is doubtless directed against those eva- 
sions which have always been practised, where the spirit and 
the intent are the same, but where the works or attributes of 
God are substituted for the name. The Jews had such reverence 
for the name of Jehovah that they never introduced it in 
conversation without some accompanying mark of veneration. 
Therefore they were in the habit of swearing by heaven, or by 
their own head, or by the sacred city ; all of which was an 
evasion of the express letter of the law, and a breach of its 
spirit, consequently sinful in the estimation of God. 

Other sins of which men are guilty gratify some strong pas- 
sion or propensity of the human heart, or procure some momen- 
tary gratification of the animal appetite. Theft, lying, stealing, 
kideed the whole catalogue of crimes, is such as are committed 
under the influence of some powerful motive. But this seems 
to be a sin of mere wantonness, of foolish temerity, of heaven- 
daring impiety, without a motive; therefore, from its very- 
nature, must be one that God regards with peculiar abhorrence. 
This is a fact which I wish to impress upon the mind, as a 
starting-point ; because most of what I have to say upon this 
subject relates to its influence upon your personal character and 
prospects. As a sin against God, what more is necessary to be 
said? It is one that no person ever attempted to justify; not 
even the profane swearer himself. His excuse, if he offers any 
at all, is, that it has become a habit, so that he uses profane 
language involuntarily and often unconsciously to himself; 
therefore all that it is necessary for me to attempt is to portray, 
as clearly as I am able, the evil influence of this sin upon the 
individual and upon society. 

I would not willingly impute crime to any innocent being, 
much less would I seek to blacken the character of one who 
has already sins enough for which to answer. When, therefore, 
I come before you, and boldly charge this young prodigal, with 
whose history and character you have become somewhat fami- 
liar, with using profane language, I feel bound to give a good 



Profane Swearing. 



51 



and substantial reason for what I say ; or I may place myself 
in the unenviable position of a slanderer ; a slanderer, too, of 
the worst kind, charging sins upon one who, from the peculiar 
circumstances of the case, cannot come up here and defend 
himself. Were it necessary, I could give several reasons. One 
'is, that he evidently was not a young man of much strength 
of character or intellect, as his history shows, and this is the 
class who generally think profane language an embellishment 
to conversation. But the principal ground for my opinion is 
the character of the associates which he formed, and the scenes 
in which he participated, and to which his wealth gave him 
ready access. 

I am not prepared to assert that every young man who swears 
is guilty of other crimes, but I am willing to stake my reputa- 
tion for sagacity upon the truth, that no young man commits 
all those sins against God and society, of which he was guilty, 
without adding to their catalogue the sin of profanity ; for it is 
the language of crime and wickedness everywhere, the vocabu- 
lary of hell ; and, therefore, it may always be heard where the 
emissaries of Satan hold their revelry. At what particular 
time, or at what stage of his career he contracted this habit, is 
a matter of no consequence ; but probably, as soon as he be- 
came a boon companion of those vile wretches, who, after 
robbing him of his honor and his money, turned him out of 
doors to starve or beg. Generally, there is very little order 
in the accession of these different vices: drinking, swearing, 
gambling and kindred sins, go together; they are frequently 
associated in one character, and practised at one time. If I 
were to task my ingenuity to the utmost, how could I frame 
a better argument against the practice, or offer a better reason 
why a young man who has any regard for his character should 
avoid it, than the one incidentally referred to ? That it is the 
language of vice, and that the vicious uniformly interlard their 
conversation with oaths and blasphemy, is a sufficient reason 
why it should be left for their exclusive use. 

S appose that the denizens of some locality notorious for its 
vices, should attempt to introduce customs and manners, styles 



52 



Ruin and Restokation. 



of dress and forms of address, would not the simple fact that 
these had their origin in such a neighborhood, be of itself a 
sufficient reason why they should be confined within its pre- 
cincts ? Every respectable person would take particular pains 
to be as dissimilar in all these respects as possible, in order to 
show that they had no tastes or affinities in common with those 
degraded beings. So when there is a language peculiar to a. 
class like this, the language of the depraved and the vicious 
everywhere, should not those who wish to be esteemed virtuous 
avoid it, as they would the contamination of actual association. 

But I leave, for the present, the further consideration of this 
point, and pass on to speak with more definiteness, of the 

NATURE AND INFLUENCE OF THIS VICE. 

1. There is no sin that more completely obliterates all reve- 
rence for God from the heart than this. We never speak 
irreverently or disrespectfully of those whom we love ; nor could 
we take the name of God in vain, or invoke his awful curses 
upon ourselves and others, unless the heart were callous to 
every good impression. The child, with an active conscience, 
may, by the force of example and long familiarity with these 
expressions, be lead to adopt them himself; but never, I appre- 
hend, without a struggle. The first oath is uttered with fear 
and trepidation. It falters upon the lips, and trembles on the 
tongue, as though the very members of the body revolted at 
the prostitution of their powers. But soon this hesitancy passes 
away, the conscience, as well as the ear, becomes paralyzed, and 
oaths rise involuntarily to the lips. It is self-evident, thab a 
practice like this, in which one of the fundamental laws of God 
is violated, momentarily, must exert a blighting influence upon 
the soul, by destroying all reverence for the character and being 
of God. And when that is gone there is very little foundation 
left upon which to build a character. This sin, probably, has 
a most fearful influence in placing the soul where it remains 
for ever callous to all serious impressions, and thus becomes the 
cause of its eternal ruin. 

2. There are two ways of estimating sin ; one is, by its effect 
upon the individual in his relations to God ; the other is, its 



Profane Swearing. 



53 



influence upon society. As a sin against society it does not 
interfere with the rights of our fellow men as lying, theft, 
covetousness and many others do. It is a sin particularly 
directed against the majesty of God. Yet it has an evil influ- 
ence in society, which no man of right feelings would be willing 
to exert. I allude particularly to its influence upon the young. 
No habit is more easily acquired by children than the habit of 
using profane language ; especially when they hear it from the 
lips of those whom they regard with respect. When it comes 
from the grogshop and from the drunkard, this is what they 
have been taught to expect. Oaths are in keeping with the 
character of those who use them. But when they hear curses 
from those with whom their parents associate, those whom they 
even see with praiseworthy regularity in the house of God, it 
confuses all their ideas of sin and virtue. It is so directly in 
conflict with the instructions they receive at home and in the 
Sabbath school that they are bewildered and amazed. Often do 
they come to their parents inquiring, " Father is such an indi- 
vidual a good man ?" " Why, yes, my child," the father replies, 
"I believe him to be a very industrious, promising young man. 
Why do you ask that question?" " Oh, nothing, only I heard 
him swear !" Now, here is a clincher ! It would be very diffi- 
cult for that parent to explain to his child how one can be a 
very nice young man and yet a profane swearer, without dimin- 
ishing, in his estimation, the enormity of the sin. Children 
make no distinction without a difference ; they argue directly 
to the point, and their conclusions are generally just. There 
are few parents, with Well instructed children, who have not 
been placed in a similar dilemma to the one supposed. Now I 
ask you, as a good citizen, if you are willing to exert this kind 
of influence upon the minds of children who look to you with 
respect. You may not notice them, but their little ears catch 
every word you utter, and they sometimes repeat it, when and 
where you would rather that it should not be heard. And I ask 
you as a parent, what right you have to corrupt the heart of my 
child, and destroy in his mind those lessons of morality which 
it is my duty to give ? 



54 



Ruin and Restoration. 



It is not the oaths and blasphemies of the vile sot who reels 
through the streets which exert an influence upon these young 
minds for evil ; because in the character and appearance of the 
wretch who utters them, they behold a fit commentary and a 
warning all in accordance with their views of its nature. But 
it is the oaths and blasphemies of the respectable and otherwise 
virtuous that do the injury. I would rather a child of mine 
would hear the whole vocabulary of oaths, with all its transpo- 
sitions and variations, from the lips of a vile, abandoned outcast, 
from whose person he would shrink with loathing, than to hear 
a single oath from one of you who have a character and influ- 
ence in society. I am aware that it is a practice, sometimes 
thoughtlessly acquired, and often continued by the mere force 
of habit. But this is no justification, nor even an extenuation ; 
because habit is a thing voluntarily acquired. It is simply a 
repetition of the same act so often that it no longer excites 
attention, and thus the heart becomes an overflowing fountain 
of corruption, sending forth its poisoned streams to kill and 
destroy. We are not so charitable toward other sins, especially 
those that infringe upon our personal rights. Suppose that in 
passing through a crowd you discover a professional gentleman 
quietly insinuating his hand into your pocket, for the purpose 
of abstracting your watch or your money ; and being moved by 
a just indignation, you seize him by the collar, and exclaim, 
"You thieving vagabond, what do you mean by plundering me 
of my property ?" But instead of quailing before your concen- 
trated wrath, he turns upon you with one of his blandest 
smiles and says, " excuse me, sir ; I did not intend to wrong 
you ; it is only a habit I have acquired." How does such a 
plea sound in justification of a sin like this? And suppose 
that the Great Judge of the Universe were to summon the 
swearer to answer for the wanton insult he has offered to his 
majesty, and for the evil influence of his example upon others. 
Could he say, " O Lord, I pray thee excuse this little sin ; thou 
knowest I meant no harm ; it was only a sin of habit ! " He 
never will stand before God with such a plea ! 



Profane Swearing. 



55 



There is another class who commit this sin deliberately, 
esteeming it a mark of boldness and other manly qualities of 
which they are sadly deficient by nature. It may seem strange 
that any person should place such a false estimate upon the 
nobility of manhood. But, notwithstanding, so it is ; and the 
reason of this is, obviously, because of a false impression as to 
the nature of these qualities themselves. They have not enough 
of manhood about them physically, mentally or morally, to know 
how these noble qualities should develop themselves, and they 
seize upon this, because it does present at least one human 
quality, viz., depravity,, and that is all. I can easily form the 
image of one of these small specimens of humanity in my own 
mind, and perhaps I can describe him to you so that you will 
recognize him when you meet him. He generally wears very 
long greasy hair, sometimes slightly twisted at the end, sug- 
gesting the idea of a curl. The little down that nature has 
sprinkled .very sparingly upon his upper lip, he has coaxed and 
twisted, and plastered with various oleaginous compounds, until 
it really has some remote resemblance to a moustache. He 
stands before the glass longer than it takes a young lady to 
make her toilet, and he will brush it one way, and then the 
other way, in the vain hope of giving it an upward curl at the 
end. Then he will draw himself up, and knit his brow, and 
imagine that he looks fierce, like a Spanish brigand, or foreign, 
like an exiled Hungarian. When all this is completed, he will 
take a little cane, and put on his little hat, and saunter forth to 
stare young ladies out of countenance, or with the more cruel 
intent of damaging their hearts. Listen for a moment to his 
language, and what do you hear ? Why, just what you might 
expect. Imprecations upon his own soul, and the souls of oth- 
ers. If he attempts such a thing as conversation, the only 
remarkable thing about it is its extreme silliness and its shocking 
impiety. Did you never meet this young gentleman in any of 
your travels ? I have encountered him in every railroad car, in 
every steamboat, at every hotel, and I give you his description 
as a fair specimen of the class who swear deliberately and will- 
fully, without the presence of passion or emotion, merely as an 



• 



56 



Ruin and Restoration. 



evidence of manhood. Yonng ladies, when yon meet him, give 
him a wide berth, as the sailors say, for he is the most dangerons 
animal nncaged. I knew one of this class who managed to 
ingratiate himself in the affections of a respectable and wealthy 
yonng lady, and who actually married her. On the very night 
that he led his bride to the altar, he stole her diamond ring, and 
the next morning pawned it, to raise money enough to redeem 
his trunk from the landlord. In less than a week he had 
relieved his new mother-in-law of the burden of taking care 
of several valuable articles of silver plate, such as forks, spoons 
and the like. The last I knew of him he was looking pensively 
through the bars of a narrow window, upon a little paved court. 
The prison barber had relieved his countenance of all its fierce, 
brigand appearance, and, like Sampson shorn of his locks, he 
was as another man. 

I give this warning, not supposing that there is much danger 
of your being tempted, even if he should make his appearance 
upon our streets ; but unfortunately it is sometimes the case that 
ladies misjudge respecting the true qualities of manhood, as 
well as the other sex, and imagine that fine feathers make fine 
birds. But of one thing you may rest assured, that the young 
man who will use profane language in your company has no 
principles, and no respect for you : in either case, you will do 
well to shun him. 

I can bear to hear the hardy son of Neptune swear, with 
some degree of fortitude, because I know that he really has a 
brave heart, and I am aware that his associations from his ear- 
liest infancy, have been of such a character that he has never 
regarded the subject in its true aspect; or I can even make 
allowance for the influence of strong passion ; because I know, 
that here, reason is for the time dethroned. But when I hear 
one calling himself a man, deliberately and willfully insulting 
God, by taking his name in vain, for the purpose of mere bra- 
vado, I must confess that I feel a disgust and contempt for the 
creature, which no language can express. 

3. But there is another kind of swearing still, that I must 
notice; or the catalogue will be imperfect. For the sake of 



Profane Swearing. 



51 



distinction, I shall call it pious swearing ; not that there is any 
real difference in the thing itself, but because it is a form pecu- 
liar to those who make a profession of piety, and to whom 
charity would impute no criminal intent. Its characteristic 
consists in substituting an adjective for the preposition, as a 
qualifying word, or, in plain language, instead of saying, "by 
God," as the wicked swearer does, the pious swearer says, "good 
God," "good Lord," or "my Lord," as an expression of wonder 
or astonishment. All that I need to say upon the subject, is, 
that it is taking the name of God in vain ; a practice, unjusti- 
fiable and of evil tendency. It has all the characteristics of 
profanity, and should never be permitted to garnish the conver- 
sation of those who hold the being and attributes of God in 
reverence. But a word to the wise is sufficient. 

In conclusion, I wish briefly to show the evil influence which 
a practice of this kind may have upon a young man's worldly 
prospects, for there is no doubt but it often exerts a blighting 
influence upon both his prospects and his success. There are a 
great many undercurrents in society, that we never notice. 
Opinions are sometimes formed from slight circumstances, and 
when once formed are hard to be changed. Often, little events, 
too trifling to excite our attention, are, in fact, turning points in 
our destiny. A profane expression, dropped at an unfortunate 
moment, may block up the way of a young man, and change 
his whole career, while he is entirely ignorant of the cause. 
By many it is regarded as prima facie evidence of a destitution 
of principles, and an association with other vices. And why 
should it not be so esteemed, when it is universally the language 
of vice ? If one of your banks were broken open, and robbed, 
and an individual were discovered in possession of a large 
number of the lost bills, would not this fact alone be sufficient 
to raise a suspicion, that he was in some way accessory to the 
robbery? So when you observe an individual using the cur- 
rency of vice, the language of the grog-shop, the gaming-table, 
a language common to the greatest criminals, and the most 
abandoned characters, of both sexes, is not this sufficient to 
excite at least a suspicion, that this is not the only blemish that 
attaches to his character ? 
8 



58 



Ruin and Restoeation. 



It is said that there is a little animal that attends the king of 
the forest, and when the traveler beholds one of these, he has 
reason to walk circumspectly, for he may be assured that the 
lion is near. So when you observe an individual addicted to 
profane swearing, you have reason to fear that it is only the 
forerunner of sins, which, in the estimation of man, are more 
disreputable than this. The reason is obvious. He who swears 
has no fear of God in his heart ; and he who fears not God, 
surely need not fear man. I do not mean to assert that such is 
always the fact, only that the practice of using profane language 
is sufficient of itself to raise a suspicion that all may not be 
right, as it respects other habits. Young people are not always 
sensible of the influence which the opinions of the virtuous and 
religious may have upon their future career. When an indi- 
vidual wishes to obtain a place of honor or profit, to whom does 
he apply for recommendations and testimonials? Why, it is 
to men of character, of influence, and of correct principles — 
often to the minister of the gospel. And when men wish for 
information respecting the character and fitness of an individual 
for a responsible place, to whom do they apply ? Why, to the 
same class ? and frequently one word from such a person may 
place a young man in a position that will lead to wealth and 
honor, or may blast his hopes, and change his whole course 
of life. 

It is utter folly to affect a contempt for the good opinion of 
others, especially the virtuous; because without this, however 
hard a person may struggle, he never can rise above a certain 
point, and that far below what any young man of proper feel- 
ings and ambition should aspire to. As well might he attempt 
to swim with a millstone about his neck, as to attain influence 
in society under the frowns of public opinion. Suppose, for 
example, that here is a gentleman who wishes to retire from 
active business, and, in seeking some one to fill the place which 
he is about to vacate, two young men, of equal capacity and 
qualifications, are suggested to his mind. One of them is free 
from all bad habits whatever; while the other is shockingly 
profane in his conversation. Would he not be likely to reason 



Profane Swearing. 



59 



something like this: One of these young men appears to be 
very correct in his deportment. I should judge him to be a 
person of good principles. The other may be equally so ; but, 
from his language, I should infer that he is not very choice in 
his associates ; and he may have contracted other vices, that will 
make him an unsafe partner. At all events, the man who has 
the keeping of my money must be above suspicion. This is 
not a forced construction, by any means ; it is just the way any 
prudent man would reason and act. Thus this evil habit may 
hang like a dark cloud upon the path, shutting up the door of 
prosperity in this world, and of salvation in the next. Doubt- 
less many have wondered at the good luck, as they call it, of 
some who were confessedly their inferiors in talent, and have 
indulged in bitter and misanthropic reflections over their own 
failure, when the whole secret lies in the fact that these have 
secured the confidence and good will of such as had the ability 
to assist them, while they have foolishly forfeited both. 

There are many things behind the scenes, affecting a man's 
destiny, which he never discovers, but which are operating in a 
way and with a power that he cannot resist. He finds himself 
baffled in almost everything he undertakes, and wonders at the 
reason, when the reason is plain enough to others. He has 
attempted to defy public opinion, and fallen under the crushing 
influence of public indignation. These things are so obvious 
to those who have been placed in circumstances where they 
could see something of the motion of the undercurrent; or 
who have stood behind the scenes and observed what was trans- 
piring on the stage of society, who have known the course of 
certain things of which the actors see only the results ; that a 
mere reference to them is all that is necessary. I could call up 
witnesses, among the men of influence in this or any other 
community, who could testify to many facts in corroboration 
of what I have said. I could refer to letters of inquiry, and 
of suggestion, of which the subject never had the slightest 
suspicion. Yet there are many, I fear, who will regard it as 
only a pulpit fiction, designed to appeal to their self-interest, in 
order to carry a point or make out a case. True, I have appealed 



60 



Ruin and Restoration. 



to your self-interest, because I know this to be the most pow- 
erful motive that sways the human heart; and I do nothing 
more, when I tell you of its final consequences, if persisted in, 
and unrepented of. The difference is, that one is a present, the 
other an eternal, motive ; and therefore as much more powerful 
as eternity is greater than time. 

It seems to be the most unjustifiable of all the sins which the 
human soul can commit. It gratifies no natural propensity ; it 
produces no sensual pleasure ; it only shows how wantonly and 
wickedly a man can sin against God. Other sins require time, 
and a peculiar train of circumstances, to render them practica- 
ble; therefore they can only be committed at intervals; but 
this requires no time, not even the cover of darkness. In busi- 
ness or in pleasure, one may sin as deeply and fatally as the 
malignant heart of Satan can desire. Of all sins, this must be 
the one which delights him most. 

Could the habitual swearer only see the list of his oaths, as 
taken down by the pen of the recording angel, he would never 
suspect that it was the work of a man; but he would suppose 
that it was the outpouring of some satanic spirit who had devo- 
ted all the energies of his mind to the task of reviling his 
Maker. And though he might be a brave man, his knees would 
knock like Belshazzar's when he saw the handwriting on the 
wall ; and the pen would drop from his nerveless grasp if he 
were required to write his signature to the list, and acknowledge 
it as his deed. 

It should be a startling thought, that God may take the 
swearer at his word, and in eternity pour upon his head those 
vials of wrath which are as yet unopened. Who would dare to 
die like that profane wretch who swore, with an awful oath, 
that he would beat a rival boat, or blow himself to hell, and 
whose body, in five minutes, was scattered in fragments over 
the wharf, and whose soul was in the presence of the Being 
whom he had insulted and defied. What is man that he should 
dare to provoke the wrath of one who can sweep him into- 
eternity by His breath ? 



V. GAMBLING. 



AND THERE WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE WITH EIOTOTTS LIVING.— Luke XV : 13. 

The subject of my lecture to-night is one upon which I have 
had less opportunity for observation, than any of the whole list 
of vices which often obtain a fatal dominion in the human 
heart. It is a sin that seeks the cover of darkness, one that is 
most carefully screened from public observation; therefore 
those who have never been initiated into its dark mysteries, can 
know but little except what is manifest from its effects. Neither 
is it necessary that I should be competent to describe the arts 
and devices, belonging to the whole complicated system of 
dishonesty. This has been already exposed, by one who was 
well qualified to speak from experience, and every man can 
read for himself. My object is prevention, and not cure, for 
this I regard as hopeless. Of the secret operations of the 
gaming-table, I know nothing ; but if one were to pass daily, a 
place where he could see living men go down into dark and 
gloomy-looking caverns underground, and then behold them 
daily bearing up their dead bodies ; it would require no wonder- 
ful degree of shrewdness to infer, that there was some kind of 
influence or agency at work there destructive of human life ; 
that there was somebody, or something there which killed men. 
So when we see men of property enter these places, and come 
out stripped of their wealth, and reduced suddenly to destitu- 
tion, we can but infer that there is some kind of underground 
agency at work there, which robs them of their money. A man 
may learn some things from an observation of what rises to the 
surface, without going down to explore all the dark caverns and 
recesses, and noticing the agencies and influences operating- 
there. When we hear of vast sums of money, carefully invested 



62 



Ruin and Restoration. 



and secured by a frugal parent, disappearing, like snow in an 
April sun, under the management of the child, we often hear 
too that it has been lost at the gaming-table. Or when we see 
an individual who is looked upon with suspicion and mistrust, 
whose society is carefully shunned by all who regard their own 
character, we hear also the secret whispered, as though it were 
a name too odious to speak aloud, that he is a blackleg. As I 
was crossing Lake Erie in one of its splendid steamers, haying 
occasion to pass by the saloon, I noticed four men intently 
occupied at the card table. My curiosity led me to step within 
the door ; for here was a scene such as I had never yet beheld ; 
four desperate gamblers intent upon robbing each other. I 
must confess that I was somewhat startled and indignant, when 
I saw that the captain of the boat was one of the number. I 
soon perceived that he was the victim, but to what extent 
I could not judge ; for they had no money upon the table ; but 
cards cut into small strips which I supposed to be the represen- 
tatives of money. But I inferred that he was a loser from the 
fact, that he frequently replenished his tumbler with brandy ; 
while the others drank but little, or nothing. Soon I retired 
disgusted and indignant that the lives of five hundred people 
should be committed to a poor drunken, gambling wretch, who 
soon must be carried to his bed in a state of intoxication. I 
thought what if a storm should arise, or a fire break out, how 
can he direct, with coolness and judgment, in such an emer- 
gency ? This was the very man, who commanded a beautiful and 
unfortunate boat, which was consumed, when upward of three 
hundred human beings perished by fire or water. The question 
has often suggested itself to my mind, whether gambling and 
drinking might not have had some connection, immediate or 
remote, with that awful calamity ; with some oversight, or some 
bad arrangement, which a man always cool and sober would 
have avoided. And I expect yet to hear of a similar catas- 
trophe; and, as usual, a card of thanks and a service of plate 
voted to the captain for his coolness and courage in the trying 
emergency. I introduce this incident here to show that gamb- 
ling, and its consequent dissipation, has more to do with these 



Gambling. 



63 



awful calamities by fire and water, that are constantly occurring 
on our western lakes and rivers, than the public are aware of. 

But before contemplating the influence of this vice upon the 
individual character, and upon society, let us direct our atten- 
tion for a few moments to its nature, and to a consideration of 
its modified forms, as they prevail to a greater or less extent in 
almost every community. 

1. There is no better way of estimating the morality of an 
act than by applying to it the great principles of law ; for, how- 
ever the ends of justice may be perverted, by fraud or cunning, 
the law itself is always a safe criterion by which to test a question 
of right. Not, indeed, a substitute for the Bible, but a correct 
exponent of the great principles of righteousness which the 
Bible contains. 

It is a universal principle of law, that no contract is valid 
where money or property of any kind is given without an 
equivalent, or a consideration, as the law defines it. All trans- 
actions are regarded as fraudulent, and nothing can be recovered 
by legal process, whatever may be the letter of the contract, where 
there is no evidence of a consideration. This principle, then, 
settles at once the morality of all those minor forms of gambling, 
such as betting, lottery schemes, and the like, as well as the 
more complicated and systematic operations of the gaming-table. 
Here is the great principle by which their morality, as well as 
their legality, may be tested; but so general, that it embraces 
many other transactions which do not fall within the strict 
definition of gambling. 

This I should define to be the hazarding of property on an 
uncertain event or contingency, which, of course, comes within 
the scope of the general principle already referred to, of re- 
ceiving money or property without returning an equivalent. 
Let us apply this definition first, by supposing two careworn 
looking gentlemen seated directly opposite each other at a small 
table, and between them is deposited a sum of money, of which 
each owns an equal share. In their hands they hold pieces 
of pasteboard, covered over with mysterious hieroglyphics, 
which they eye with the most intense interest. Now we will 



64 



Ruin and Restoration. 



suppose that, upon the turning up of a particular character or 
number upon one of these, the event of which is equally uncer- 
tain to both, depends the ownership of that money. This is 
gambling in its fairest or most honest form, if I may be allowed 
the paradox, because there is no trickery or deception used, by 
which the result is made certain. 

Then let us suppose another, and in some respects a parallel 
case. Here is a certain future event, dependent upon contin- 
gencies, the result of which no human wisdom or forethought 
can divine. It may be success of a political candidate, and 
upon this event the ownership of a sum of money, deposited in 
the hands of a third person, depends. This is betting. Now ? 
how do these transactions differ in their nature ? Will not 
exactly the same principle that tests the morality of the one, 
place the other in the same category ? Will not the same defi- 
nition that describes the one, define the other with equal 
clearness and precision? First, money received without ren- 
dering an equivalent ; second, the ownership is dependent upon 
an uncertain event. This is the nature of the transaction in 
both cases, and it matters not whether that uncertain event be 
the turning of a card, or a die, or the speed of a horse, or the 
weight of an ox, or the election of a President. There may be 
a difference in the characters of the men who practice these 
different kinds of gambling; but this will not change the 
character of the act. ]STor is it safe to overstep the dividing line 
between a life of strict morality and dishonesty, because there 
is no telling how far astray it may lead a person before he is 
really aware of his danger. When principle ceases to oppose 
a barrier to what is wrong, there is no security against a 
departure from the line of rectitude until the individual is 
guilty of the most wicked and corrupt practices. 

This is a branch of the subject which should not be passed 
without reference to its evil influences upon society, as well as 
upon the character of the individual. The future glory and 
destiny of our country depend upon the purity and patriotism 
of those who are soon to act an important part upon the political 
stage. And the young man who begins his political life by this 



Gambling. 



65 



species of gambling, will most likely become an unscrupulous, 
unprincipled demagogue. We cannot meet these responsibili- 
ties, so as to secure to those who are to come after us the sacred 
trust that we have received, if we are actuated by base and 
mercenary motives. Patriotism, and not money, should be our 
governing motive. A man who has staked his property upon 
the result of an election, will not hesitate to employ the most 
unjustifiable means to accomplish his ends. Bribery, corruption 
and iniquity, in every form, will characterize the efforts of this 
class. The most reckless gamblers become the most zealous 
politicians, carrying with them into the election, all the base 
and malignant passions of the gaming-table. These are your 
pure-minded politicians, whose patriotic breasts burn with holy 
indignation against those who, in acting according to their con- 
scientious convictions of duty, oppose their interests, not because 
of principles, but because their money is at stake. The evil 
then is not one that is confined to its influence upon the indi- 
vidual character ; but it is one which threatens to subvert the 
very foundation upon which our government is based. 

Thus far, we have supposed that all these hazards, which 
characterize every species of gambling, were of a kind in which 
the parties stood an equal chance of success. But whoever 
imagines that the professed gambler leaves anything to chance, 
is yet in that happy state where "ignorance is bliss." We are 
informed by those who are acquainted with all the secret opera- 
tions of the gaming-table, that every card is known to the 
gambler, by the back as well as by its face ; and that the whole 
system is but a complicated calculation, by which the results 
are obtained with the utmost certainty. As much so as a lottery 
scheme, or an insurance policy, or any other system based upon 
chance. If the intended victim is ever permitted to go away 
with his prize, it is regarded only as a loan, to be repaid at a 
ruinous interest, done merely to inflame covetousness, or increase 
his self-assurance, that he may venture his stakes in larger sums 

There are two classes of gamblers, those who make it a busi- 
ness, or a profession, and those who are their dupes. One to 
do the plucking, and one who has the feathers to be plucked. 

9 



66 



Ruin and Restoration. 



The plucker and the pluckee. It would never do for professed 
gamblers to turn upon and devour each other, for this would 
end like the tale of the Kilkenny cats ; therefore, they must 
continually seek new resources, or discover new victims, among 
those who, like the young prodigal, have obtained their patri- 
mony. These they flatter and cajole, and permit to win small 
sums, until they entertain exalted ideas of their own shrewd- 
ness, and then suddenly strip them of all they are worth and 
all that they can borrow from others. 

I cannot, if I would, depict the course of the gambler after 
he comes fully under the influence of this vice, when every 
principle of honesty, and virtue, and honor have been rooted 
from the heart, and the whole company of affiliated vices 
admitted there. Their work is like that of hyenas in the grave- 
yard, to destroy the last lineament of humanity. It is a vice, 
which, more than any other, calls into exercise all the other 
vices to complete the work of destruction. Oovetousness, 
greedy frenzied covetousness, is its motive. Profanity its tech- 
nical language, the wine cup its proper stimulus, and lust its 
presiding genius ; while hatred, revenge and malignity are the 
passions engendered; and murder and suicide its common 
results. How many have gone from the gaming-table into 
eternity, either by their own hand, or by the hand of one of 
their associates? For it is an admitted fact, that the winner 
of a large sum seldom carries away his ill-gotten treasure from 
the gambling-house. He is either drugged and then robbed, or 
actually murdered. " Found drowned," or " died by the visita- 
tion of God," is generally the verdict of the coroner in such 
cases ! And it is the visitation of God, in one sense. It is one 
of those awful retributions, which are operating continually in 
his government, by which we have demonstrated to us, even in 
this world, that "The wages of sin is death." But this vice, 
like all others, has a beginning, and it is here that we must 
seek to apply the remedy. A man does not start up all at 
once an accomplished and unscrupulous gambler. There is 
invariably a gradual departure from the line of rectitude ; a love 
for the excitement of play developed by degrees, which, if 



Gambling. 



67 



unchecked, ends in a most uncontrollable passion. Even after 
the barrier of strict integrity has been overleaped, and the fatal 
career commenced, there is sometimes a point when a moderate 
degree of firmness would save a man. A recent author gives a 
striking instance of this ; he says : "A friend of mine, now 
a distinguished member of the bar at the east, told me, that 
on returning from court in a neighboring county, after having 
gained his first suit, it was proposed among the company — 
mostly lawyers and officers of the court — -to gamble. He 
joined with others, and lost all his own funds. He had with 
him a large sum of one of his clients. In the excitement of 
the moment be staked a part of that and lost it, and at length, 
by resorting to another game most ferocious in its nature, he 
succeeded in winning back the whole. No sooner had he done 
this, than the position in which he had placed himself, and the 
infernal influence of the practice by which he was induced to 
hazard the funds of another, and thereby risk the bankruptcy 
of his own character and his client's purse, were vividly im- 
pressed upon him. He arose from the table. He was a man 
of great sternness of purpose, and although a youth among his 
seniors, he declared, ' G-entlemen, this is the last game of chance 
I ever play. I gamble no more.' He stopped upon the verge 
of ruin.'' 

Many others have done so when there was a determined will, 
a character, and some remnant of principle left. But if this 
man had ended the game a loser, and thereby had ruined his 
character for honesty by squandering the money of his client, 
would he then have taken the course he did to save himself? 
The only safe place to drive down a stake, as a fixed point, or 
a boundary line that cannot be passed, is at the very commence- 
ment. The rule snould be, never to play for a copper ; never 
to give or receive money where a great principle of honesty is 
violated ; then a man places himself above temptation. When 
assailed by the tempter, he should say, with firmness and deci- 
sion of manner, "G-entlemen, I never bet;" "Gentlemen, I 
never gamble. 1 ' It would be better for him if he could say with 
truth, " I don't know one card from another." If a young man 



68 



Ruin and Restoration. 



has decision of character enough for this, he will easily escape 
the snares of those prowling miscreants who are seeking victims 
among the young, and who would even tempt them to be dis- 
honest, that they may steal it again. They are good judges of 
character, and they will soon learn such a subject, and select for 
their prey one that is destitute of fixed principles, and who may 
easily be led by the artful. The place where this work of self- 
destruction commences is generally in the small social circle ; 
often in company with those who should be the last to encourage 
a love for this dangerous amusement. If young ladies could 
only see the awful consequences to themselves, which may result 
from an innocent game of whist, they would never countenance 
the card table. Most of them are sisters ; they have brothers, 
dear and cherished. Some have others who will one day sus- 
tain a nearer relation than this ! What anguish may wring their 
hearts, if one of them were to sink so low as to become a gam- 
bler, an outlaw, a companion for burglars, highwaymen and 
murderers ! A gambler's wife ! What an object of pity ! Yon 
can choke up a stream at its fountain, and turn its course by a 
slight obstruction; but, when it has gathered to itself other 
streams, and becomes a torrent, rolling and foaming down the 
mountain side, it will sweep away every obstacle ; nothing can 
resist its mighty tide. 

Perhaps there are some who will say that these games, which 
are indulged in the social circles, are not the kind that are used 
in gambling. These depend more upon skill, — those more upon 
chance. Whoever asserts that the game of whist, which, I be- 
lieve, is the one most usually chosen in the social circle, is never 
used for the purpose of gambling, must be strangely ignorant 
of the customs of society in what we sometimes call " high life." 
It is the great gambling game among the aristocracy of Europe, 
and European customs find swift imitators in this country. Nor 
is it confined to one sex ; females, perhaps I should say ladies, 
often play for ruinous stakes, and become as inveterate gamblers 
as their husbands. It is the common practice in large compa- 
nies, when the younger portion begin to arrange themselves upon 
the floor for the purpose of commencing their midnight revelry, 



Gambling. 



69 



then the rich old dowagers, with high caps and ribbons, and the 
stiffened np old rakes, who can no longer " bend the pregnant 
hinges of the knee " in the dance, retire to convenient rooms, 
and commence their work of robbery, under the name of amuse- 
ment, with all the eagerness of professed gamblers. Yon may 
see one of these ancient dames peering throngh her spectacles, 
to watch the conrse of the game, as the cat watches the motion 
of her intended victim ; and when the resnlt is declared, she 
will reach ont her hand, like the claw of a harpy, and clntch 
the shining gold, with all the avidity and tenacity of the miser. 
Wo be to the simpleton who sits down, thinking he is only to 
play for amnsement ; it will prove the dearest amnsement that 
he ever purchased. 

But if it were true that this and similar games were never 
used for other purposes than diversion, we may inquire if the 
love for this kind of excitement does not lead to a love for other 
games, still more exciting, because of the money at stake. I 
knew a Christian parent who was in the habit of joining with 
his children in games of cards and backgammon, and who con- 
tended that it was at least an innocent amusement for long winter 
evenings. Soon his eldest son attained the age when it was 
necessary for him to leave the paternal roof, and with bright 
prospects he entered upon his college career. 

But so inveterate was his love of cards, as yet only used as a 
source of amusement, that after repeated warnings and admo- 
nitions he was suspended for a transgression of the college rules 
in this respect. He then commencd the study of law, and in 
a few years obtained a lucrative practice. Money was entrusted 
to his charge, and with the possession of the means came the 
overpowering temptation to indulge in other games, not so inno- 
cent in their character, and his father soon had large sums of 
money to pay in order to save him from utter disgrace and 
perhaps a prison. With a character seriously damaged he still 
managed, through the influence of wealthy friends, to secure a 
traveling agency of considerable importance. He visited tha 
various places on the great western thoroughfare, and for a 
while his returns were made with punctuality. But, alas ! in an 



70 



Ruin and Restoration. # 



evil hour he fell among thieves in one of our southwestern 
cities, who stripped him of money, watch and of every thing 
he possessed, and he died suddenly, of cholera, it was said, 
without a dollar upon his person to buy him a shroud. Stran- 
gers threw him into a hastily dug grave, and thus ended the 
career of as noble hearted a youth as ever excited a father's 
hope or drew forth a mother's tears. Every one may draw their 
own inferences ; but I would not have the harrowing reflection 
that as a parent I might have directly, or indirectly, contributed 
to such a result, for all the wealth of a Rothschild. We are 
taught to pray that we may not be led into temptation ; and 
if we would escape this, we should avoid all games that may be 
employed for dishonest purposes. And as parents we should 
keep the knowledge of them from our children; this is the 
surest way to guard them against the power of the tempter. 

I remark, in view of what has been presented to our minds, 
that there is nothing so fatal to a man's prospects in this world 
as the reputation of being a gambler. For an individual to rise 
in society ; or to be successful in business, he must obtain the 
confidence of those who have it in their power to assist him. 
No man can ever struggle successfully with the great current 
that is constantly moving him downward, unless he obtains the 
good will of those with whom he is associated. And who can 
repose confidence in the gambler? When we know that such 
is the strength of this vice, that thousands who otherwise would 
have been honest and respectable citizens, have, through its 
influence, squandered not only their own property, but have 
violated the most sacred trust, and sacrificed that of others; 
thus integrity, reputation, money and worldly prospects have 
been engulfed in a common ruin. This is pre-eminently a bad 
name ; and a suspicion of a practice like this will hedge up the 
way when the individual seeks a place of honor or trust. 
It will meet him, when he requires that kind of assistance 
which every business man is sometimes obliged to seek. It will 
oppose him, when he desires to form that connection, which 
more than any other will affect his happiness. By shutting up 
the doors to an honest business, it leaves but one path open, and 



Gambling. 



71 



that is the way of the transgressor. It will dog him, like his 
shadow down to the grave, and enshrine his name with infamy. 

Who are those that are associated together by a mysterious 
tie, and whose band of brotherhood is community of crime ; 
and whose business it is to forge, counterfeit, rob and murder ? 
They are such as in early life obtained the reputation of gam- 
blers; and to whom as a consequence every avenue to a 
respectable business was closed. The awful frown of public 
opinion withered them until they shrunk away to dark places, 
and resorted to baser practices. And who are those that, under 
the influence of the most agonizing remorse, have retired to 
some solitude and there ended their disgraceful career, by a 
more disgraceful death ; feeling, as one expressed it, that hell 
would be his just doom, but that there could be no worse hell 
than the one in which he lived, nor worse devils than his asso- 
ciates in crime. He may have been right, so far as it regarded 
his own case, for probably his soul was as completely under the 
influence of remorse and despair, as are the souls of the lost. 
His misery was greater than he could endure. 

But who pities the gambler ? The drunkard has sympathy, 
because he is his own worst enemy. The gambler has curses, 
because he is society's greatest curse. I knew a gambler to die 
once, suddenly and awfully ; and many good citizens said, that 
they were glad of it. It was a blessing to society to have him 
removed. And they were right. When the gambler dies, 
there follow him the imprecations of his poor ruined victims 
who are treading in his steps, but feel that they have no power 
to turn their course. There follow him the execrations of 
wives, who have been robbed of their husbands, and whose 
husbands have robbed them to pursue their course of rum. 
There follow him the curses, deep and bitter, of gray-headed 
parents, who go sorrowing down to the grave, because their 
hope has been ruined for time and eternity, and has ruined 
them in turn. There follow him the thanksgivings of an out- 
raged community, that is relieved of a common enemy who 
was continually robbing them of their money, and of that which 
was more precious than money. Who drops a tear upon the 



72 



Ruin and Restoration. 



gambler's grave ? Who plants a shrub, and watches and nurses 
the budding flower where his carcass lies ? Not one ; his name 
and his memory are alike hateful to all who cherish virtue, and 
detest vice. Tremble, young man, when your fingers first touch 
the wages of unrighteousness ; for this may be your fate. 

But I cannot close without directing your thoughts, for a 
moment, to the consequences of such a life, beyond the grave. 
This, and its affiliated vices are not those harmless and innocent 
amusements, which indicate a mere excess of animal spirits, 
and that time and an experience of the trials of life will cure. 
They are vices that grow with the growth, and strengthen with 
the development of character, and which if indulged in will 
most certainly exclude the soul from heaven. If they are 
execrated by society here, how can their possessors be admitted 
into the society of those pure spirits that never sinned, and of 
the just made perfect, and of God the source of purity and 
holiness? "And there shall in no wise enter into it, that is 
the Heavenly City, any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever 
worketh abomination or maketh a lie." * * * "For with- 
out are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers 
and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." Which 
is the fitting place for those whose whole life is fraud and 
deception ? Judge ye ! Dream not of happiness here ; or heaven 
hereafter, until your hearts are fitted to find that happiness, in 
those pursuits and pleasures which have no sting. 

Other considerations, such as reputation, success and the 
restraints of public opinion may keep you from open immoral- 
ity; but nothing but true virtue, and the implanting of those 
principles, which are the work of God's Almighty Spirit and 
Grace, can so renovate the heart, as to secure your ultimate 
happiness. Seek religion then, as the great safeguard and 
bulwark of defense against vice ; and seek it now, before evil 
habits have worn their furrows so deep in your heart, that 
nothing can obliterate them. 

If you have been interested in following me, as I have at- 
tempted to depict those scenes in which this young prodigal 
participated, until he was reduced to that situation of awful 



Gambling. 



78 



destitution and wretchedness, which I am jet to describe ; and 
if, in reviewing your own life, and examining your own heart, 
you find yourself obnoxious to any of these charges, I beg that 
you will follow him when I shall turn the picture, and trace 
his course homeward, with abasement, repentance and tears, 
and resolve that you will make his case your own. That as he 
found peace and happiness, in the kind embraces of a reconciled 
father ; so you will give yourself no rest, until you find it in 
the bosom of your reconciled God. 



10 



VI. INTEMPERANCE. 



AND THERE "WASTED HIS SUBSTANCE "WITH RIOTOUS LIVING. — Luke XV I 13. 

Perhaps it will be thought that I have followed the course of 
this wayward and dissipated young man far enough ; that the 
scenes of debauchery in which I have supposed him to partici- 
pate, are already sufficient to answer the description of the 
parable, and that it is time for him to turn his face homeward. 
But the work of ruin is not yet complete. True, he has vices 
enough to debase him to the lowest depths of depravity. He 
has already run up a fearful score against his character, and 
were he to be called to an account just as he is, it would be a 
terrible reckoning. Yet there is one thing still wanting to make 
the wreck complete, and we are not justified in supposing that 
he was reduced to those circumstances of abject wretchedness 
in which the parable places him, without the agency of one 
more vice. 

Doubless he often had moments of remorse, and in the soli- 
tude of the night, or when the excitement of dissipation had 
passed off, he would think of the happy home and the innocent 
pleasures that he had left, and would sigh as he contrasted his 
present situation with what it had been. The instructions of 
childhood, the offices of love, performed by those whose affec- 
tions he had spurned, all would rush upon his memory with 
overpowering force, and drive him, in very desperation, to still 
wilder scenes of recklessness and folly. 

But so long as the means of procuring this excitement lasted, 
these reflections could only serve to render him the more des- 
perate. There was one thing still necessary, one depth of 
degradation still lower to be attained, before his frenzied intellect 



Intemperance. 



75 



could grasp the true condition in which he had placed himself. 
And there was only one that could so completely finish the 
work as to leave him no alternative but to pursue the course 
that he finally adopted, or starve, and that was intemperance, — 
the subject to which I now wish to direct your thoughts. I 
ask myself in the commencement, what can I say that is new, 
upon a subject that has for so long a time enlisted the talents 
of the most eloquent men of our land ? or how can I present it 
in a way that my message shall not seem like a thrice-told tale. 
I look forward along the track that I propose to follow, and can 
discern no bright spot, no ray of light to enliven the dark 
picture which I must present to your view. 

The work of intemperance is emphatically the work of death, 
and in dealing with it, we are obliged to pass through scenes 
of desolation, of sighing, and of blood. It may be, and often 
has been, presented in connection with incidents and anecdotes, 
ridiculous enough in their character to excite the mirth of an 
audience ; but we should remember that even this is the work 
of death, and that if these scenes can present anything amusing, 
it is because reason — the noble prerogative of man — is de- 
throned, and he has, for the time being, reduced himself to the 
condition of an idiot. 

~No wife ever saw anything diverting in the grotesque appear- 
ance, and drawling speeches of an intoxicated husband. It 
may afford amusement to indifferent spectators, but is death to 
all her hopes and her happiness. No parent ever found occasion 
for merriment in the drunkenness of a child. He would as 
soon laugh while they were lowering his dead body into the 
grave, as to laugh at this living death ; more to be dreaded even 
than the work of the grim adversary who has power over the 
body only. I have not the heart, even if I possessed the 
ability, to treat of this subject only as one suggestive of solemn 
and melancholy reflection; for probably many of those who 
hear me have experienced indirectly something of the bitterness 
of this curse, and feel anything but a disposition to be amused 
at its development. 



Rum and Restoration. 



The time was, when the efforts of temperance men and tem- 
perance lecturers were directed to arouse public attention and 
to the creation of a correct public sentiment. But after sufficient 
information had been communicated, and enlightened public 
opinion was against the custom of using alcoholic drinks ; when 
the decanter was banished from the side-board, and the brandy 
cask from the cellar of the temperate citizen, the attention of 
philanthropists was very properly directed to measures designed 
to suppress the traffic. But, perhaps, in discussing these colla- 
teral questions, we have lost sight, in a great measure, of the 
principle upon which all restrictive measures must be based, 
which is, that intemperance is a deadly sin; a sin, too, of a 
threefold nature as committed against the individual, against 
society, and against God. For it is upon the truth of this pro- 
position that we derive our right to interfere with the business 
of those who are engaged in the manufacture or sale of that 
which produces it. I propose, then, to go back to the considera- 
tion of the "first principles of our faith," in the hope that I may 
be able to " stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance." 

The proper way to estimate a vice is by observing its ulti- 
mate effects, when the subject completely abandons himself to 
its dominion. "We are not to judge of the evils of intemperance 
by an observation of those who have just commenced a career 
of dissipation, and who indulge only in choice wines and the 
purest liquors, and who fall only occasionally under its power. 
These are as yet in the initiatory stage. But we are to look at 
the poor miserable trembling wretch who is already tottering 
on the verge of eternity, through its agency ; we are to observe 
the appearance and character of the bloated, blotched, ugly, old 
whiskey toper, who robs his sick wife of her last sixpence ; and 
here we have presented to our view the true character of the 
vice. 

A man never becomes completely ruined in mind, body and 
estate, without the agency of this habit. Other vices may 
impair them all ; but it is this which puts on the finishing 
touch, because it dethrones reason and causes him to cease to 
feel and act like a man. It levels all distinction between man 



Intemperance. 



11 



and man, and between man and beast. While tinder its influ- 
ence lie has no intellect to perceive and judge, no conscience to 
restrain, no sensibilities to be shocked ; and thus he comes under 
the dominion of the wicked and designing. 

1. Let us contemplate this subject for a few moments as a 
sin against the individual's OWN being, or a direct violation 
of those laws which preserve the system in a state of health. 
Everything in Grod's universe is naturally harmonious. This 
law of harmony prevails in the great planetary system. In the 
ten thousand invisible agencies that are silently but perfectly 
carrying out the designs of Infinite Wisdom. It prevails also 
in the human system, where its operations are not interrupted 
by disease, or impaired by the influence of those agencies which 
are the result of human folly or human wickedness. In a state 
of health the body may be compared to a beautiful piece of 
machinery, in which you observe the turning of various wheels 
and cylinders, all in harmony ; each performing its revolutions 
in its proper time ; there is no sudden and erratic movement, no 
confusion, no jarring nor grinding of one wheel against another, 
but silently and beautifully it moves together while the great 
balance wheel gives steadiness and uniformity to the whole. 
Eemove this, and in an instant the perfect harmony is destroyed, 
and, like a creature mad with rage, it will roll with tenfold 
power until it wrecks itself by its own velocity. 

The Grod of nature has thus constituted the human system, 
arid whatever destroys the balance of its different organisms 
exposes the whole fabric to destruction. If a steam-engine were 
so constructed that it were capable of sustaining only a given 
pressure, and with this amount of pressure all its parts move 
with harmony and with strength, what must be the consequence 
of adding to it tenfold more power ? So, if the Divine Archi- 
tect has established a certain ratio between the pulsations of the 
heart and the respirations of the lungs, sending the vital fluid 
from the one to the other just as fast as it can be purified and 
fitted for the purposes of animal life, what must be the conse- 
quence of pouring into that system a fluid that increases the 
first and diminishes the last, thus driving noxious blood through 



78 



Ruin and Restoration. 



all the various tissues of the frame ? That this is the constant 
and unfailing result of stimulating drinks in health, where the 
harmony of the system is perfect, is the testimony of every one 
acquainted with the laws and structures of the body, and con- 
firmed, too, by the most superficial observation ; for we often 
see a degree of excitement bordering on frenzy, and a few hours 
afterward behold the same man drooping, nerveless and trem- 
bling, as though he had suffered from severe protracted disease. 
Of all the inventives which the ingenuity of man has devised 
for producing the rapid disorganization of the structures of the 
human body, none have equaled in their terrible power and 
success the introduction of alcohol, in its various forms. It has 
been like adding another to that fatal curse which doomed our 
race in the day of the fall. Had we never seen such a thing as 
intoxication, we should suppose that these effects indicated the 
accession of some awful disease, which must soon terminate life. 
I have in my mind a very pertinent illustration of this fact, 
which I will narrate to you, although somewhat at the expense 
of my own reputation as a man of discernment. 

When I commenced the practice of medicine* in a New 
England village, young in years and in experience, I was sum- 
moned at the dead hour of night, in great haste, to see a young 
man who was suddenly taken with the most alarming symp- 
toms. I found the patient in what physicians call a comatose 
state, a condition bordering upon apoplexy. He was insensible, 
his respiration very slow and heavy, face flushed and almost 
purple, pulse full, and beating with that peculiar force and 
strength which denotes imminent danger. I was at once appre- 
hensive of serious consequences, and about to resort to the most 
obvious mode of relief, when it was suggested that he had eaten 
heartily of greens for his supper, and that perhaps" some poison- 
ous herb might have been mingled with them. Here was a cue 
at once to the nature of the disease : the young man was undoubt- 
edly poisoned ! I changed my course and proceeded to admi- 
nister an active emetic, and in the meantime dispatched a 
messenger for a stomach-pump and the apparatus necessary in 



* The author's original profession was that of a physician. 



Intemperance. 



79 



such emergencies. Contrary to my expectations, the stomach 
responded to my remedies, and ejected large quantities of a dark, 
suspicious-looking fluid, which, on careful analysis, proved to 
be, not a decoction of deadly nightshade or stramonium, hyo- 
sciamus or any of the noxious plants which grow indigenously 
on our soil, but something more potent than either. It was 
nothing more nor less than New England rum and molasses. 
It is hardly necessary to add that I did not resort to more active 
treatment after this development. 

Heretofore, he had been a young man of irreproachable 
character ; besides, he had a young wife and aged parents, and 
I thought that it would be no relief to them to learn the true 
nature of the case ; for this reason I directed cold water to the 
head and mustard drafts for the feet, and left him convalescing. 
I do not introduce this incident for the purpose of diversion, 
but to show how alarming the symptoms of intoxication really 
are, where we are unsuspicious of the cause ; and that it is 
nothing but our familiarity with them that prevents us from 
appreciating their true character. 

Many seem to think and act as though they had a perfect 
right to trifle with and destroy that which God has so fearfully 
and wonderfully made, for the residence of our immortal spirit, 
to develop its intellectual and moral qualities, and to prepare it 
for a glorified existence hereafter. But we are to glorify him 
with our bodies as well as with our spirits, and we can only do 
this when we observe those laws which are established for their 
preservation. If God has given life, man has no right to 
throw it away as worthless. If he has endowed him with a 
reasonable soul, he sins against God and himself when he 
dethrones reason and reduces himself to a mere animal. If he 
has created him but one degree removed from the angelic grade, 
it is the greatest conceivable insult to his Maker to debase him- 
self until no vestige of his nobility remains. How would it 
appear in heaven if an angel were to disrobe himself of that 
glory in which he was created, to incapacitate himself for the 
worship and offices which pertain to his nature, and become a 
dark, deformed nondescript, an animal, a mere thing, amid the 



80 



Ruin and Restoration. 



bright circle of angelic worshipers? Yet this is what man 
does when he divests himself of all the prerogatives of man- 
hood, and descends so low in the depths of infamy as to be 
incapable of answering any of the ends of his being to society. 

This is the nature of the sin which the inebriate commits 
against the laws of his own being. And were my object merely 
to illustrate its disorganizing and ruinous effects upon the physi- 
cal man, I might easily consume the time that I have allotted 
to myself for this lecture, and then leave the subject at the very 
threshold. But this I cannot regard as necessary. It is one 
that is fearfully presented to the observation of every man ; and 
its influence, both immediate and remote, is demonstrated to be 
evil, and only evil continually. If we turn our thoughts back, 
and for a moment recall the past, we shall remember that when 
we were children there was then upon the stage a generation of 
drunkards, who were to be seen reeling through the streets ; men 
in the prime or meridian of life, but bowed under many infirmi- 
ties. Perhaps we followed them in derision, or upon errands of 
mercy we visited their desolate homes. Where is that genera- 
tion now ? How many of them are left to curse their families 
and disgrace humanity ? To a man they have been swept into 
eternity. He who lives in the daily violation of any of God's 
natural laws, outstrips the flight of time and prematurely buries 
himself in the abyss of eternity. Twenty years, or even ten, 
are amply sufficient to sweep from the stage a whole generation 
of drunkards. 

2. But man is not an isolated being, bound only to consult 
his own individual happiness. He is a social being, and as 
such sustains relations to others and to society which he cannot 
disregard without sinning against them. If he is a husband 
and a father, God holds him responsible for the manner in which 
he fills that most important place in the social system. In the 
constitution of society, and by the ordinance of Heaven, there 
are others who are dependent upon him for their happiness, yea, 
for their very subsistence. Their position in the social scale is 
regulated by his. Their education, secular and religious, is to 
be directed by him, and the influence of his example is the 



Intempekance. 



81 



most powerful agent which can be brought to bear upon the 
development of their character. 

I am aware that the class to whom I wish particularly to 
address my remarks do not, as yet, sustain these relations ; but 
probably many are looking forward, with some degree of eager- 
ness, to the time when they will. Few, if any, expect to perform 
the journey of life without a companion to cheer, or a heart to 
sympathize. The comforts of a home and the luxuries of the 
domestic fireside are of such a nature that few are willing to 
forego them all to live a life of solitude and die unwept. 

It is in anticipation of this, as a future event in your history, 
that I wish to show the awful consequences of entering upon 
such a relation with that appetite already formed, which will 
turn every affection of the heart to bitterness, and change the 
greatest blessing into the greatest curse. It is now, while your 
x characters are developing, that these habits take that insidious 
hold, which will subsequently, it may be many years hence, 
bring every affection and sensibility under their power. And 
I affirm that no man is competent to fill this important place in 
the social system, who has contracted a love, however slight, for 
the excitement of drink ; for it will overpower and quench 
every other love. This is not a question that admits of argu- 
ment, for we may turn to the facts and see demonstrated before 
our eyes the manner in which the intemperate man fills the 
place of a husband and a father. 

Whose wife is this that walks the streets sallow and shivering 
with scarce clothing enough for decency, to say nothing of com- 
fort? Whose children are these that come begging at our 
door, ignorant, vicious, profane and ragged ? Whose house is 
that where rags and old hats protrude through the windows, 
and pigs wallow at the doors, and smoke and steam and oaths 
issue from the numerous crevices ? Will you enter this abode 
of vice and wretchedness ? Draw up your dress and step high, 
if you are a lady, lest you become contaminated by the filth 
accumulated at the threshold. And now what do you see 
there ? A pale and forlorn looking creature at the wash-tub, 
her only resource, and the avails of which she is obliged to 
11 



Ruin and Restoration. 



secrete from her husband. A sick child in the cradle, moaning, 
and almost choked with smoke and steam, wrapped up in a 
complication of old coats and petticoats, and rags and filth. 
Another child screaming at the door with red hands and redder 
feet, and a little ragged slip which scarce covers his bare legs. 
An indefinite number of half starved dogs at the most com- 
fortable places by the fireside. The husband at the grog-shop, 
and the older children polishing off their education by dividing 
their time between the grog-shop and the street. This is the 
drunkard's home, and this the way that he fills his place in the 
social system. These people did not commence life thus. 
When she married him he was industrious and kind, and for 
the most part temperate ; but the appetite was there, the habit 
already acquired, and what you now behold is only its full 
development. 

And here, young ladies, I have a word of advice and warning 
for you. I am aware that it is a thankless task to advise in 
matters where the heart is concerned, but 0, what is a love 
worth, that in a few years will be overpowered by so base, and 
selfish an appetite ? Ladies sometimes flatter themselves that 
their influence will be sufficient to overcome this passion and 
produce reformation ; but there can be no greater mistake com- 
mitted than to trust your happiness for life to such a delusive 
hope as this. Facts are all against such a supposition, and only 
serve to show that, where the appetite for intoxicating drinks 
is formed, the change of circumstances by the new relation will 
only check it for a season, to break out again with accumulated 
power and ruinous consequences. 

It is often said of this class of husbands, and it is doubtless 
true of some, though not of all, that when they are themselves 
they are unusually kind and obliging. But what is this kind- 
ness worth, when they will sacrifice the happiness of the whole 
family, mortify the wife, until, disconsolate and broken-hearted, 
she retires from society, desiring neither to see nor to be seen 
by her associates, and beggar the children, rather than forego 
the gratification of his own selfish appetite? If this is true 
affection, then it would be hard to define its reverse. The man 



Intemperance. 



83 



who really loves his wife and children with disinterested affec- 
tion will make sacrifices for them, he will deprive himself of 
many things that he would like to possess, that he may con- 
tribute to their happiness and well being. Judged by this rule, 
then, there is no heart in the universe so really cruel and 
unfeeling and supremely selfish as that of the drunkard. I am 
strenuous upon this point, because I believe he has often had 
a reputation to which he has no just title. That the partiality 
of affection often leads to an over-estimate of little things, 
which in another would be regarded only as matters of course. 

The hangman is generally kind and affable while he puts the 
rope around the neck of the prisoner, but he hangs him for all 
that. So the drunkard in his intervals of dissipation may have 
turns of sensibility, made the more manifest by the presence 
of remorse. Nothing is too good for his wife then, no parent 
more affable and fond toward his children than he ; but he 
ruins them all together, notwithstanding, so far as his agency 
goes. He has put the rope around their necks and he is tight- 
ening it all the time. And he will see them all plunged into 
the lowest abyss of shame and degradation before he will forego 
his own gratification. If these things are true, how carefully 
should the female part of society guard themselves against 
permitting their affections to become enlisted toward an im- 
proper object. 

A young lady should no more entertain the thought of form- 
ing a connection with one of this class, than with a gambler, or 
a burglar. And when a young gentleman is pouring senti- 
mentalities about love and future bliss into her ear, and the 
fumes of brandy into her nose at the same breath, she should 
ask him to take himself away, his head should never come near 
enough to that of any virtuous female to poison her with the 
fames of the whiskey-tub. Beware of the man who carries this 
undisguisable mark of his secret habit ! He may fill his mouth 
with cloves, cardamom or lozenges, but if he drinks brandy, it 
will be distinguished above them all, and the secret will out. 

I cannot suppose it to be true of any of my present audience, 
but I have known young ladies so far forget themselves as to 



84 



Ruin and Restokation. 



countenance their friends of the other sex in drinking wine and 
other intoxicating drinks at saloons and at private entertain- 
ments, by drinking with them. And I have seen the conse- 
quence in what seemed to be a just retribution. And I address 
myself particularly to you, because your happiness is at stake, 
and you may be made to surfer all that this vice can inflict, 
merely from want of proper admonition and caution. I address 
myself to you too, because your influence in the social circle 
now, can do more in saving your associates who are in danger, 
than all the preaching and lecturing in the world. You can 
preach a sermon that may have a practical application ; let your 
text be temperance, or single blessedness. And rely upon it, 
that it will be blessedness indeed, in comparison to being 
chained to a drunkard, to being a drunkard's wife, to living in 
a drunkard's home. In barbarous times one of the most cruel 
punishments devised by the malignity of man, was to tie the 
culprit hand to hand, foot to foot, face to face, to a swollen and 
putrid corpse, and leave him thus to perish. And 1 can find 
no illustration more expressive of the true nature of the relation 
which the virtuous wife sustains to the drunkard. 

I would not speak thus had I not seen its awful consequences 
over and over again. And as a parent, I believe that I can say 
with truth, that I would rather see a son of mine brought home 
a corpse, than in a state of beastly drunkenness, did I know 
that this was to be the commencement of a drunken career. 
Or, if I had a daughter fair and lovely, I would rather follow 
her body to the grave, than to the altar, and see her wedded to 
a drunkard. These are strong assertions, but I can find parents 
who have experienced both these trials, who will confirm 
emphaticalty what I say. 

This is only one relation which a man sustains to society, as 
a component part of the great social system, but as it is by far 
the most important, I pass the others by and proceed to remark : 

3. That drunkenness is a sin that will most assuredly 

EXCLUDE THE SOUL FROM THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEK 

There is no sin more repeatedly and emphatically denounced 
in the Word of God than this. I need not repeat all the denun- 



Intemperance. 



85 



ciatory expressions which are used to describe his doom ; it is 
sufficient to refer to the fact that drunkenness is uniformly 
placed in the same category as murder, theft, idolatry, and other 
crimes of the blackest character. Moreover, it declares in the 
most positive terms that the drunkard shall not inherit the 
Kingdom of God. 

As far back as the days of Moses it is said of this character 
that the Lord will not spare him, and his jealousy shall smoke 
against that man, and all the curses that are written in this 
book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name 
from under heaven. Aside from these, how can such an indi- 
vidual stand before God in the day of judgment to answer for 
the manner in which he has filled his place in society ? He 
may have had parents who needed his support ; or at least who 
had anticipated comfort and happiness in their declining years 
from his society, and from the gratification of their parental 
pride. And how has he repaid all that solicitude and self- 
denial with which they reared him for a place of usefulness ? 
Is there a scene more heart-rending than to see a parent stricken 
and riven like the mighty oak, scathed by heavens lightning, 
as he beholds his hopes all blasted and the child of promise 
descending into a drunkard's grave and a drunkard's hell ? Or, 
God may have given him a Christian wife, whose example and 
influence would have led him into the way of life, had he not 
constantly resisted, yea, and abused her, because of her meek 
and gentle reproof. His children, to whom he should have 
been an example of virtue and sobriety, may have, through his 
neglect, or worse than this, his crime, grown up in ignorance 
and vice, to multiply into a whole generation like themselves. 

How can we estimate the evil which one such member of 
society may do, for it terminates not with his own guilty career, 
but may be perpetuated for many generations. How, then, can 
such a man hope for favor at the tribunal of heaven ? Nor is 
there a rational expectation of his seeking mercy by repentance. 
The spirit of God cannot dwell in the same breast with the 
spirit of a demon. Oaths and curses and prayers do not mingle 
well in the incense which the heart sends up to heaven. If his 



86 



Ruin and Restoration. 



breast is ever touched by feelings of remorse, it only drives Kim 
to the bottle and not to the closet, to the bar-room or grog-shop, 
but never to the house of God. The very excitement in which 
he lives drowns all serious reflections, ar>d then benumbs all the 
religious and moral sensibilities. No, the drunkard cannot 
repent so long as he pursues his course in direct violation of 
every law, natural, social and moral. His first step must be 
reformation, and then there is hope. But will he be likely to 
do this ? Or if he seems to be changed for a season, will he 
persevere to the end and be saved ? Often do these apparent 
reformations prove in the end like the man out of whom the 
devil had been cast, but who afterwards took unto himself seven 
other spirits more wicked ; " and the last state was worse than 
the first." 

If these things are so — and who can deny their truth? — 
you perceive the importance of taking a proper position in 
relation to this great question of our day. The remedy lies 
not in the law, for no law can ever be framed that shall render 
it impossible for a man to become a drunkard. Law may do 
much in preventing temptation, but it can never put it out of 
your power to ruin yourself if you will. The remedy lies 
within yourself; in the stand you take at the commencement 
of active life. If you leave yourself to be guided by circum- 
stances, there is no security against your being led away by 
temptation. It is not safe to flatter yourself that you can regu- 
late and control an appetite that is once formed ; for you cannot 
be aware of the strength and power of that habit until it is too 
late. 

Many mightier men than any of us have fallen under its 
power. So long as the hopes and prospects of youth buoy up 
she spirits, a man may perhaps restrain his appetite within certain 
bounds; but let disappointment come, and that deep dejection 
which results from expectations blasted, and see how fearfully 
rapid will be the strides which he takes to the last crowning 
scene of misery and shame. And when I hear of a young man 
who has once fallen under the power of temptation, I regard 
him as already in the net which the enemy has spread for his 



Intemperance, 



87 



soul, and every repetition is like forging for himself a new link 
in the chain which is to bind that soul in everlasting chains. 
How often does the inebriate perceive, in his moments of reflec- 
tion, the ruin which is impending ! How does he resolve, and 
re-resolve, with the big tears of penitence rolling down his cheek, 
that he will break the fatal spell ! But, alas ! habit is the master, 
and he the slave. 

Could I take a young man of this audience by the hand and 
show him the drunkard in his wretched home, stretched upon a 
bed of penitence and death, surrounded by everything that can 
harrow up the soul of a dying man, or spending his last breath 
in oaths and blasphemies, and his last energies in combating 
imaginary demons, biting and foaming like an infuriated demon 
himself, and yelling with fright and horror, and then, with the 
prescience of inspiration, whisper in his ear, behold here your 
own miserable end ! I doubt not but he would start from me as 
though stung by an adder. And well he might. Yet I have 
witnessed just such a death-scene, in one who commenced life 
with as flattering prospects as any of you ; one who for many 
years went no lower in the scale of vice than to haunt the fash- 
ionable hotels and saloons. 

But who can remain stationary when this habit has once taken 
its hold ? Its course is downward, and downward ; it will drag 
its victim notwithstanding all his struggles. There is no safe 
anchorage between moderate drinking and perdition. You may 
make a nest of vipers your playthings, or warm the envenomed 
reptiles in your bosom, but " look not upon the wine when it is 
red, when it giveth its color in the cup, for at last it biteth like 
a serpent and stingeth like an adder." Survey for a moment 
the path of the drunkard. Behind him are the scenes of youth 
and innocence, the only bright spots in his career, gone forever. 
Before him is the abyss of eternity to which he is urged with 
an irresistible power. Around him are grim spectres of famine, 
disease and death, who dog his footsteps and haunt his dreams. 
Hunger guaws his vitals, cold pierces his frame, disease palsies 
his nerves, hope flees his breast, remorse stings his conscience, 
despair clanks her chains in his ear, madness sears his brain, and 



88 



Ruin and Restoration. 



on he flees as though pursued by all the furies of Orestes, until 
clouds, portentous of Omnipotent wrath and lurid with perdi- 
tion's fire, gather over his destiny. Our mortal vision can follow 
him no further, but methinks, that for every drunkard that falls 
into eternity, a darker wreath rolls up from the bottomless pit. 
It is the smoke of that torment which ascends forever and 
forever. 



VII. CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. 



AND WHEN HE HAD SPENT ALL, THERE AROSE A MIGHTY FAMINE IN THAT LAND ; AND HE 
BEGAN TO BE IN WANT. — Z/Uk& XV : 14. 

In the succeeding verses we read: "And he went and joined 
himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his 
fields to feed swine. ' And he would fain have filled his belly 
with the husks that the swine did eat ; and no man gave unto 
him." 

The term here rendered husks, embraces several kinds of 
coarse food which were used principally for fattening swine, but 
which were also, in times of scarcity like the one referred to, 
the common food of the poorer classes of society. The fruit, 
supposed to be particularly indicated, is that of the carob tree, 
which is indigenous in Ionia, Syria and Ehodes, and resembles 
in its characteristics the common bean. 

We have come now to a new event in this young man's career. 
The scene is suddenly shifted, like the changes upon the stage, 
and he whom we last saw in the whirl of excitement and pleas- 
ure, enjoying to-day and careless of to-morrow, we now behold 
reduced to the lowest extreme of abject wretchedness. The 
picture is one of life, except that the scenes of life do not always 
change so suddenly. But the parable is very concise, and only 
presents us with results, without detailing all the minute cir- 
cumstances and influences which combined to produce them. 
The truth probably is, that like all similar cases, he went on 
from one degree of wickedness to another, plunging deeper into 
crime and degradation, until all at once he was startled into 
sobriety by finding himself far away from home, without money 
and without friends ; turned out upon the world by his graceless 
companions, as an unfeeling master turns out a broken-down 
12 



90 



Ruin and Restoration. 



horse upon the common, to pick for himself or to die. This is 
the way the master, whom he had served always, treats his most 
faithful servants when they are no longer useful to him. And 
this is the manner in which his emissaries — those lesser devils 
incarnate — use their companions in vice. When they have 
plucked their gosling clean they throw him out, regardless of 
the cold wind or the pitiless storm, without even a cover for his 
nakedness. 

" When he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that 
land, and he began to be in want." Here was a twofold 
calamity ; his money was gone, and what was worse, his character 
was gone too. And then there arose one of those terrible 
famines peculiar to that country. The question with him was, 
not how he should amuse himself, or what scene of dissipation 
he should visit ; but where he should appease his appetite and 
allay the gnawings of hunger. Should he go back to his asso- 
ciates, who had robbed him of his patrimony, and who were 
chuckling over their ill-gotten gains, and beg of them, on the 
score of old friendship, cemented by many a bottle of sparkling 
wine at his expense, to restore at least a few dollars to save him 
from starvation? They would only curse him for his impu- 
dence, or taunt him for his simplicity ; or perhaps quarrel with 
him and thrust him into the street, for the bare intimation that 
there had been anything ungentlemanly in their conduct to- 
wards him ! So long as he was the dashing young spendthrift, 
scattering his money with reckless prodigality, they were ready 
to convulse with laughter at his jokes, even if they were rather 
stale ; they were willing to be made the butt of ridicule them- 
selves if it added to his self-complacency, or even to accept of 
slight apology for a hasty blow. But now the least insinuation 
of anything unfair or unkind, is sufficient to offend their dignity, 
and to arouse their wrath. Here, then, was the last place to 
look for sympathy. 

Should he seek out some honorable and virtuous citizen, and 
apply for an honest employment suited to his education and 
capacity ? Such a one might inquire, " Are you not the young 
man. ,w!k» came here from the east, whose associates have been 



Consequences of Sin. 



91 



the lowest and vilest scum of society, who have filled our town 
with tales of your reckless prodigality, and whose influence has 
already corrupted the hearts of many of our children ? No, I 
have no employment for such as you ! I want honest, indus- 
trious, temperate men, and not bloated inebriates; or broken- 
down profligates, or bankrupt gamblers ! " 

Should he actually descend to beggary ? The parable hints 
that he did ; " but no man gave unto him" Who could regard 
him as a proper object of charity? Would they not justly 
suspect him of imposition ? Would they not say to themselves, 
there is no use in giving to him, for he will only abuse our 
charity and spend it upon his depraved appetite ? How natu- 
rally, and yet how inevitably, every door seemed to be closed 
against him ; as though there was a combination in society to 
exclude him from any honest employment, and actually to 
drive him to a more desperate course ! 

This is the way that burglars, highwaymen and counterfeiters 
are made. When a man has reduced himself to such a condi- 
tion by vice, then he is held by a stern and inevitable law to 
the course which he has chosen. And society only acts on the 
defensive, when it fears and shuns such a character. But this 
young man had one redeeming trait. There was one influence 
at work in his heart, and now that he was brought to reflection, 
its saving efficacy began to operate. He could not abandon 
himself to such a life as now opened to, him. The influence 
of home, and the impressions of childhood saved him, where 
another would have been utterly ruined. 

He resolved to go out into the country where he was not 
known, and accept the first honest employment that offered: 
thus, by degrees, to attempt to retrieve his character and posi- 
tion. A man may ruin his character in a day, but it takes 
years to re-establish it when once lost. A fire will destroy in 
a single night what it takes years of patient toil to construct. 

1. But this parable has a spiritual as well as a literal inter- 
pretation, and is intended to apply to every one who is prodigal 
of the blessings of heaven, who abuses the love of God, and 
throws away life without attaining any valuable object. There- 



92 



Ruin and Restoration. 



fore, in the farther consideration of this subject, I shall draw a 
parallel between the temporal calamities which befel this infatu- 
ated youth, and those spiritual calamities which will befall the 
soul that is prodigal towards God. 

I shall refer to his case only as an illustration of what such 
an individual must do in order to receive the forgiveness of his 
abused and insulted Father. The specific subjects of which I 
have spoken, as combining to produce his temporal ruin, have 
their application to our temporal relations, as we pass on 
through life. They work out their own results, and present 
them to the eye ; but the consequences of our abuse of spiritual 
mercies may not appear till the soul experiences them in 
eternity. The parable illustrates the tendency of all sin, and 
shows a result that will be attained, sooner or later, by every 
one who passes away life prodigal of its blessings, and thought- 
less of the future. There will be a day of want, of desolation 
and despair, that will visit the soul, causing deep and unavail- 
ing sorrow in view of its own recklessness. 

It is a worldly maxim that vice is the parent of misery, and 
an inspired truth, that "the way of the transgressor is hard." 
Every virtue, which we are commanded to practice, conduces 
to health, honor, wealth and happiness, while vice of every 
description leads directly to disease, dishonor, poverty and 
misery. Thus we have the evidence before our eyes, that holi- 
ness is necessary to. perfect happiness; and that all that is 
required to make hell as dreadful as it is represented by the 
figures of Scripture, is to let human passion reign unchecked ; 
for it sometimes makes a hell upon earth. 

We may deck vice in gay attire. Art and wealth may lend 
their aid to hide her deformities, and grace her manners, so 
that at first she may charm with her blandishments and her 
deceitful smiles ; yet it is like dressing up a grinning, ghastly 
skeleton in the drapery of a bride. When her diabolical end 
is attained, she will drop her mask, throw off her drapery, and 
stretch out her long fleshless arms to encircle her victim in the 
embrace of death. 



4 



Consequences of Sin, 



03 



It is not probable that thi3 young man entertained such 
views of the nature of his sin while he was in the height of 
sensual enjoyment; but when he began to be in want; when he 
could see with unclouded vision its terrible results ; when 
he looked at himself, degraded to a miserable swineherd, and 
sharing with his charge their coarse but nutritious fare, he 
began likewise to perceive the deformity of sin in all its grades 
and developments. 

So it may be with many of us, as it respects the relation of 
the soul to the eternal future. Because we flatter ourselves 
that all is well, when we are, in fact, far away from our 
Heavenly Father and the enjoyment of His love, it is no evi- 
dence that the day will never come in which the soul will be 
in want ! A time when we may, like him, look back over a 
life squandered, love abused, mercy slighted, blessings per- 
verted, and, before us, to a degradation deeper than that into 
which he had fallen — the degradation of an eternal companion- 
ship with all the vile outcasts of earth, and with devils. This 
parable, as already stated, has a spiritual, as well as a literal 
interpretation, and this is the very point intended to be illus- 
trated in this passage : " When he had spent all, there arose a 
mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in want." And 
what is the real difference between the case of this short-sighted 
young man, who had wasted his substance with " riotous living" 
without thought of such an emergency as had now occurred, 
and the individual who spends the whole of life in pleasing 
himself and who finds upon his death-bed that he has made no 
preparation for those awful reverses that are coming upon the 
soul? What have his worldly honors, or worldly riches, or 
worldly pleasures done in preparing him for the scenes now 
about to be disclosed to his view, in the destruction of all his 
airy castles, and the awful famine of a soul without God and 
hope ? 

When your minds are filled with wonder, in view of the 
infatuation of one who wasted his time and patrimony upon the 
follies and vices of youth, institute for a moment a comparison 
between these two cases, and see if an impartial judgment' will 



94 



Ruin and Restoration. 



not decide that they bear no more comparison than time does to 
eternity. 

2. But let us go deeper than to a mere observation of the 
external circumstances of this individual. If we can look 
within his mind and see what thoughts are revolving there, and 
within his heart, and discern what emotions begin to be awak- 
ened within his breast, we shall learn many lessons of practical 
importance as it regards our own spiritual relations. 

This we are enabled to do to some extent, from what is dis- 
closed in the succeeding part of the parable. But our view 
at present is restricted to his condition as he sat disconsolate 
watching his swinish herd, an employment to a Jew the most 
menial and disgusting, and not to be coveted even by a Gentile. 
Can any condition be imagined more helpless and hopeless, 
more pitiable, more God and man forsaken, than that of the 
poor, nerveless, dejected outcast who has run his career of vice, 
blasted every prospect, shut up every door of hope, and who, 
from dire necessity, is compelled to think on his ways and devise 
some mode of relief? His mind is shattered, his body enerva- 
ted, his spirits broken, his resolution and fortitude gone, and 
then, as though this were not enough to keep him down, he has 
superadded a load which, of itself, is sufficient to crush him 
forever, in the strength which his evil habits have acquired. 

Poverty and suffering ma}^ quell them for a season, but the 
moment his prospects brighten they will revive with all their 
original power. His future course must be literally a warfare 
with the flesh and the devil, and it will be no matter of surprise 
if they triumph in the end. At all events, nothing but unceas- 
ing vigilance on his part, and the assistance of Almighty grace, 
can keep him from falling. O ! if there be an object of pity in 
the universe, it is the prodigal who has run his race, and who 
is striving to breast the mighty tide that is sweeping him down 
to the gulf of infamy. The wonder is, not that so few retrieve 
their errors, but that any accomplish such a herculean task. 
And when we observe an effort of this kind, we should hasten, 
with all the sympathy of love, to strengthen every good pur- 
pose. 



Consequences of Sin. 



95 



He needs sympathy and help ; for all along his career he has 
been heaping up obstacles which appear to his disheartened 
spirit as high as heaven, every one of which must be surmounted, 
and this, too, under all the disadvantages and disabilities of his 
condition. Suppose such a one to be a dear friend, struggling 
with this pressure of circumstances and these entanglements of 
Satan. Ought you not to pity him, and fly, as on the wings 
of love, to his relief? He may be a penitent to-day, attempting, 
with all his wasted strength, to rise. To-morrow he may have 
given up the contest, and fallen, to rise no more. 

Nor do I intend these remarks to be restricted, in their appli- 
cation, to a condition of temporal ruin merely. They apply 
with equal or even greater force to the spiritual state of a soul 
convicted of its sinfulness, but unable, of its own strength, to 
cast off the shackles of spiritual bondage and rise from the 
degradation of sin to newness of life. The sinner has abused 
the goodness and mercy of God, until, from a feeling of delin- 
quency, he lacks confidence to ask favor of a Being so deeply 
injured as his Heavenly Father. And in the despondency of 
his heart he says that it is vain to hope for forgiveness, where 
so many mercies have been abused, so many blessings perverted, 
and so many gifts squandered. He is conscious that he has 
been all his lifelong wandering from home ; that every step he 
has taken in sin has increased the gulf of separation between 
him and God. Every act of transgression rises up as a cloud 
to shut out his soul from the light of heaven, until his fevered 
imagination beholds the whole spiritual horizon gathering black- 
ness over his head. He sees no light, no hope. How many 
obstacles have accumulated in his path! What humiliation 
and self-abasement he must suffer ! What temptations are to 
be overcome! What resolution he must summon before he 
can retrieve the errors of a whole life ! No wonder that he 
sometimes gives himself up to despair, and sits down to brood 
over the accumulated miseries of his situation. This is the 
light in which he views his own case, when he surveys his con- 
dition under the goadings of an awakened conscience — a view 
which arises entirely from his own sense of delinquency, and 



96 



Ruin and Restoration. 



which his excited imagination paints in such living colors as to 
deter him from taking the only course that he can adopt with 
safety. 

The prodigal at first gave himself up as lost. He did not 
think of adopting the course which resulted so happily until he 
had tried every other expedient, and only when driven to the 
last extremity did he form the resolution to go home and hum- 
ble himself before his father. If we were to examine his 
course with reference to its spiritual application, we should say 
he had no business out in that field, living among the swine, 
when he knew that he had a kind and indulgent father, who 
only needed to see his destitution to relieve it ; to know of his 
penitence to forgive. He ought to have possessed confidence 
enough in his father's humanity to have at least ventured upon 
his mercy. But it was humiliating to go back in such a plight ; 
that was the great obstacle. And so the prodigal, away from 
God, has no business to sit down in despair, when he knows 
how forgiving his Heavenly Father is. Let him say that he is 
tired of sin — that his soul is in want — famishing in a dry and 
thirsty land, where no water is, and that he is resolved to go 
home to his abused father and crave his mercy ; and how many 
sympathizing hearts will fly to his rescue? How many will 
extend the fraternal hand and bid him God speed ? How many 
will intercede with heaven to pity and forgive the penitent? 
God himself will bend a listening ear from his throne of mercy 
to catch the first broken accents of contrition. It is an incense 
that is fragrant in heaven, because it is the incense of the heart. 

3. But I am getting in advance of my subject. I must 
return to the condition in which the text describes the prodigal, 
for he had not yet formed the resolution of which I am speak- 
ing. He was "in want." Here was a proper situation for 
reflection. The excitement for dissipation had passed off, and 
with it all the delusions and deceptions which had cheated his 
soul and lured him on to ruin. He was alone. Solitude in 
such a case is dreadful, still it is salutary. The mind can then 
turn upon itself, and look deep enough into its own disorder to 
understand the worst of the case. What remorse such a retro- 



Consequences op Sin. 97 

spect of life must have awakened in his breast ? He could call 
to mind the happy days of innocence and youth, his father's 
counsel, his mother's parting tears, and think of the misery 
which the tale of his ruin would inflict, should a rumor of it 
reach their ears. He could picture, in imagination, those loved 
ones at home, when they assembled after the toils of the day, 
as families are wont, to talk of the absent son. To wonder if 
he were alive, or whether he were successful and happy, and to 
look forward to a future day with delightful anticipations, when 
he should return, perhaps laden with riches, to delight their 
ears with narratives of the strange scenes and events that he 
had encountered in his journey. Alas, what a picture would 
he present to a parent's eye. No wonder that he should shud- 
der at the idea of inflicting such a blow. His father had done 
all that he could to give him a respectable outfit. He had even 
divided his living; which, instead of using to advantage, he 
had spent upon his unhallowed lusts. How many similar cases 
there are in the world ? And is there any remorse like that of 
such a conscience? Or any grief like that which a parent 
endures when he learns that the object of love, of hope, of 
pride, whom he had expected to win a name of honor, has 
covered himself with infamy ? 

I knew a young man who committed a crime which sentenced 
him to the gallows, and which fate was only averted by suicide. 
And when his father, a most worthy and respectable man, heard 
of his wicked deed he fell stunned to the earth. The cruel 
blow paralyzed every faculty, though he lived for years after, 
it was as a driveling idiot. He was at least saved from a know- 
ledge of the final catastrophe. It is an awful thing for a man 
to ruin himself temporarily ; but what comparison does it bear 
to a soul ruined eternally? Think of this ye who are sensible 
of his wickedness, but who perhaps are committing a more fatal 
error yourselves. "Will not the follies of life recur to the mind 
and overwhelm the soul with desolating power in eternity ? 
Will not a quickened imagination paint the very walls of the 
prison with the scenes of an infatuated career, standing out in 

13 



98 



Ruin and Restoration. 



bold relief ; and fill the very atmosphere with voices whispering 
the awful truth, " Sinner, thou hast destroyed thyself." 

O, these Sabbath bells, these venerable old family Bibles, these 
songs of Zion, these pious instructions, yea, all these abused mer- 
cies of God ! This richer patrimony to the soul than any earthly 
possession, will be remembered when they are gone forever. 
Memory and conscience will live so long as immortality endures. 
Nothing but the utter annihilation of the soul can avert these 
consequences. 

4. But there is another feature in the case of this young man 
that has been only referred to incidentally. It is the view which 
he must have obtained of the deceitfulness of earthly pleasure 
and the disgusting nature of sin generally. He once had many 
friends ; nothing could exceed their devotion or the ardor of 
their professions. They were ready to drink with him, to win 
money from him, or fight for him whenever it suited his conve- 
nience. His friends were their friends ; his enemies the objects 
of their particular hatred. Where were they now ? Like all 
friendships formed from interest and cemented by vice, they 
were dissipated at the first blast of adversity. These are not 
the friends for such an emergency as he was encountering, and 
he doubtless looked with loathing and hatred upon his former 
associates, and with contempt upon himself for having been their 
dupe. 

Then again, there was the ball-room, the place where he had 
lavished his money with characteristic profusion ; where he had 
occupied a prominent place among the gay throng of revelers ; 
where beauty had smiled upon him, and cringing servility had 
done him homage. Could the ball-room do nothing for him 
now ? Look at him away in that desolate field, sitting among 
the pigs, hatless, shoeless, shivering and companionless. Does 
he look like one that had figured in the ball-room ? Let him go 
there now and what would be his welcome ? The ladies would 
scream and apply to their smelling-bottles, and whiskered 
waiters would be summoned to thrust the disgusting creature 
out of the room. Yet he is a better man now than he was when 
they flattered and fawned upon him, because he is at least a 



Consequences of Sin. 



99 



sober man. He is a wiser man, too, because be bas learned a 
practical lesson tbat be will not easily forget. He will never be 
guilty again of making sucb ebaracters bis companions, or suGb 
pleasures tbe object of pursuit. 

0, bow must he now loatbe and bate everything connected 
with his former life ! These vices and pleasures have done 
their unhallowed task, they have completed his ruin, and now 
they afford him nothing to fall back upon in the hour of dis- 
tress, no, not even a theme of contemplation, without at the 
same time awakening feelings of remorse and shame. Such is 
the true nature of all earthly joys, and the prodigal could now 
estimate their worth. He could look at himself and see a prac- 
tical demonstration of what sin does, tbe want and desolation 
which it entails and its utter insnfficiency to afford aid and con- 
solation when they are most needed. 

And now, in bringing my subject to a conclusion, let me 
present the analogy between his case and that of tbe individual 
who has looked no further than this world, either for happiness, 
or for resources when the soul is done with the scenes of life. 
This young man did not know that a famine was coming, yet, 
he might have known that the course of life which he was lead- 
ing would end in destitution. But we do know that a time is 
not distant when all the objects of sense that now engross our 
time will be valueless ; when the idols of our heart will forsake 
us ; when we shall lack both the energy and the opportunity to 
retrieve our error, if we have committed one. Are there not 
even now premonitions of such an event ? Does not the soul 
aspire after something higher and holier and more enduring, 
more congenial to its own nature, than the things of time? 
What means this panting, and grasping, and sighing after some- 
thing above and beyond what it has yet experienced, if it be 
not an evidence that the soul is already in want ? What if you 
were possessor of all the wealth that ever delighted your imagi- 
nation, you would be no nearer happiness than you are now. 
Or if you were to enjoy all the honors of a world at vassalage, 
and kings were to lie in humble submission at your feet, like 
the monarch of the world, you would sigh that there was not 



100 



Ruin and Restoration. 



another world to conquer. This is because there are spiritual 
wants originating in your spiritual nature, which, if not satisfied, 
will leave the soul amid all the delights of sense, as in a - " dry 
and thirsty land where no water is." Let me suppose one of 
you to have attained all the desires of your heart, in respect to 
this life ; but, like the prodigal, have neglected to think of a 
day of want. Riches have procured for you every luxury 
which wealth can purchase. Sympathizing friends watch 
around your dying bed to anticipate every want. These have 
done much in securing to you respectability, influence and hap- 
piness, and will do much in smoothing the dying pillow, and 
alleviating physical suffering. They will minister to your 
wants through the last stages of life's journey. All this I 
admit. Bat when you come to the journey's end, what can 
they be then? How will your case differ from that of the 
prodigal when he was left without resource ? You look back 
over your life, only at a hand's breadth, a vapor, or, like a 
meteor flashing for a moment across the heavens, and then 
buried in darkness. Yet it has consisted of many long years, 
now wasted and gone forever — eternity is before you. There 
is the maturity of the soul and there lies the scene of its exalted 
hopes, and the theatre of its mighty developments ; but this is 
a change for which no preparation has been made. 0, will 
there not arise a mighty famine in the soul then ? A famine 
more raging and intense than all the suffering which the poor 
diseased dying body can endure? When such a moment as 
this approaches, and the curtain begins to fall over the scenes 
of time, and the eternal world opens before the eye, quickened 
into spiritual discernments, and all these considerations of 
infinite magnitude one after another begin to rise and swell, and 
glow, until they occupy every thought, what has earth to do 
with the soul then ? It has faded like a phantom of the mist, 
and in an instant is gone forever. 

The folly of the prodigal consisted in wasting a few months, 
or at least a few years in pleasure, disregarding the future ; of 
squandering his fortune without securing anything valuable. 
And when you view him forsaken, destitute and miserable, 



Consequences oe Sin. 



101 



you say at once, here is a just retribution. And he felt that 
it was just, now that he saw things in their true light. But 
what shall be our decision in regard to one who has spent the 
whole of life, without regard to the future life ? who has squan- 
dered not an earthly patrimony, but the far richer patrimony 
of grace which God has conferred upon the soul. God has not 
bestowed all these blessings upon us without, at the same time, 
creating a responsibility for the manner in which we improve 
them. Christ did not suffer humiliation and death that we 
should perish miserably and without hope, as though there were 
no way of salvation provided, but that the terrible sting of 
death may be removed by the presence of faith and hope. God 
has not given us the Sabbath, with all its hallowed associations 
and delightful privileges, that it should be spent like other days, 
in toil and pleasure ; but that we may cultivate our minds and 
hearts in the study of religious truth, and the worship of the 
sanctuary. He did not furnish us with the Book of Life, that 
it might prove a savor of death by obscuring the path to heaven ; 
but that it might be a light to the feet, and a lamp to the path ; 
a chart on the troubled ocean ; a lighthouse upon the sunken 
rock, sending its beams far over the expanse of waters, and 
guiding to a port of safety. 

This is the patrimony that we have received from our 
Heavenly Father; and the question is, how it has been im- 
proved ? If any of us are ever so unhappy as to sit down in 
the realms of despair, wretched and forsaken of God and hope, 
how this inheritance of grace will dwell in the memory, and 
these green spots in the desert of our pilgrimage will haunt the 
imagination ? The misery of the prodigal was as nothing com- 
pared with such a retrospect of life as this, for he might yet 
retrieve his error, and go home to his father ; but the soul that 
has squandered away life is shut out from God, and hope, and 
heaven. is there not such a famine coming upon the souls 
of some who hear me ? 

I cannot read the future, and if the book of fate lay before 
me, and I had permission to open and read, I would not dare 
unclasp its lids. But I can discern enough in the present to 



102 



Ruin and Restoration. 



foresee what the future must be. I see it in your abuses of 
(rod's great mercy; in your thoughtlessness of death; in the 
insensibility of the soul to spiritual things ; in the infatuation 
which seems to possess the heart ; in banishing thoughts of the 
future, by the excitement of the passing moment. Living like 
the gilded butterfly which flutters across our path in the morn- 
ing and lies dead at our feet at night. All this is evidence, to 
my mind, that a time will come when, in the language of inspi- 
ration, the soul will moan in piteous accents, 0, that I had been 
wise, that I had understood this, "that I had considered my 
latter end." 

But this bitter hour has not yet come. Now your case is 
like that of the prodigal. You may go home to your Hea- 
venly Father, saying, " Father, I have sinned against heaven, 
and before thee." If you will do this, and follow him step by 
step, as I shall hereafter describe his course, there will be joy 
in heaven over another repentant sinner. 



VIII. THE RESOLUTION. 



AND WHEN HE CAME TO HIMSELF, HE SAID, HOW MANY HIKED SERVANTS OP MT FATHER'S 
HAVE BREAD ENOUGH AND TO SPARE, AND I PERISH WITH HUNGER ! I WILL ARISE 
AND GO TO MV FATHER. — Luke XV : 17, pt. Of 18. 

There is great force in the simple expression, " when he came 
to himself." It implies that he had been living under a delu- 
sion or hallucination. That he had not acted under the influ- 
ence of any of those motives which should govern a rational 
being. He had exercised neither wisdom nor forethought, but 
had lived in a state of continued excitement, governed only by 
momentary impulses. His conduct in seeking and obtaining 
a most menial employment was, perhaps, in the state to which 
he had reduced himself, the best that he could have adopted as 
a temporary expedient ; for we may readily suppose him inca- 
pable of forming any fixed resolution, or of devising any 
extensive plans for the future. 

What he most needed was an opportunity for reflection, and 
time for his mind to rally its exhausted powers. But his was 
not a course of life that could accomplish for him what was 
necessary. It could never restore him to his lost position. And 
now that he was secured from the immediate danger of starva- 
tion, he began to cast about himself, and to devise something 
more effectual. His condition was one of conviction. He saw 
his former life in its true colors ; he felt the bitterness of sin. 
He had just views of his own case and of his fathers character. 
The scales had fallen from his eyes. The intoxication had left 
his brain, and he longed to go home. His situation was much 
like that of the poor deluded lunatic who, in possession of the 
idea that he is a prince or a hero, has decked himself with 
tinsel and feathers, were he to be restored suddenly to his right 



104 



RtriN and Restoration. 



mind, and to have a rational view of himself in all his finery 
and filth as he had appeared to others. This coming to one's 
self is a necessary pre-requisite to any important or efficient 
step when an individual has been acting under delusion. 

If a man has been infatuated with any vice which is leading 
him down to ruin, he must come to himself ; he must see its 
character and tendency in its true light, and his own position in 
relation to it, before he will summon a sufficient momentum of 
resolution to surmount the obstacles in the way of his restora- 
tion. Or, if an individual has placed himself in the same con- 
dition in his relation to his Heavenly Father that this man had 
in relation to his earthly parent, he must perceive the nature 
and tendency of sin, his own guilt in practising it, and the holi- 
ness and justice of God's character as they truly are, before he 
will resolve to break loose from its trammels. 

The prodigal, then, was, at this stage, a convicted sinner, but 
not a converted one. That work was only complete when he 
was locked in his father's embrace, and heard the command, 
" Bring forth the best robe and put it on him ; and put a ring 
on his hand and shoes on his feet ; and bring hither the fatted 
calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry : for this, my son, 
was dead and is alive again ; was lost, and is found." He was 
at home then, restored as completely to his place and to the 
affection of his parent as though he had never sinned. 

But the resolution, which was the turning point in his destiny, 
was not so easily formed as we may imagine from a simple peru- 
sal of the parable. There is a struggle, a conflict of passions 
ana emotions which always precedes a step of such importance. 
Many a prodigal has been reduced to a state of beggary, who 
never formed the resolution to go home. Many a man, given 
up to the dominion of some particular vice, has seen its nature 
as clearly as the prodigal did, who has not broken it off, and, as 
a consequence, has gone to a premature grave. And many a 
convicted sinner has had all these great truths presented to his 
mind until his brain has almost reeled with the intensity of the 
excitement, who has died in sin. 



The Resolution. 



105 



I feel, therefore, that I should not be doing justice to my sub- 
ject, were I not to enter into a more minute analysis of the 
operations of his mind, before he had brought it to the fixed 
and determined purpose " to arise." There were many obstacles 
existing in the mind itself that would naturally operate with 
great force in deterring it from making this important resolution. 
They were just such difficulties as often do prevent men, in 
analogous circumstances, from retrieving their errors. Their 
influence is to suspend the mind in a vacillating, hesitating, 
undecided state, until the favorable moment for acting is passed. 

1. There was a great distance between him and his father's 
house. For we read that when he had received his money he 
took his journey into a far country. His object was, as I stated 
when speaking upon that subject, to get away from his father's 
observation and the restraining influences of home. The whole 
parable shows that his father was a man of rank and property ; 
therefore his son did not wander off as a vagrant, on foot and 
unprepared for his j ourney. He was probably furnished sumptu- 
ously, and mounted upon a horse or a mule, with every provision 
made for his comfort. Thus he might have found it very pleasant 
to ride an easy day's journey and be well entertained at night. 
There was in this that continued change and novelty which is 
so gratifying to a youth of roaming propensities. How different 
the case would be on his return. This whole distance, once 
traveled so pleasantly, must be retraced on foot, over burning 
sands and sharp stones that would blister and lacerate his tender 
feet. It was easy enough to get away ; but it is hard to get 
back ! The way to hell is broad and smooth ; but the way to 
heaven is beset with many difficulties. All these objections 
would arise in his mind, and he saw that it was to be a work of 
life and death, and not one requiring an ordinary effort of the 
will. Was he sure he had strength enough to accomplish the 
task, or would he perish by the way ? We shall see. 

2. But there was another obstacle more formidable than this. 
What humiliation and self-abasement it would require? He 
could bear to humble himself before his father, for him had he 
injured ; but there were others to behold his disgrace who had 

14 



106 



Ruin and Restokation. 



not a father's sympathy. He could imagine how those young 
companions, who had regarded him with envy when they be- 
held him leave in the possession of his fortune, would point at 
him the finger of scorn, and the laugh of derision would echo 
through the streets. Nor would these sentiments be confined 
to one class ; for while the young would jeer and taunt, the old 
would shake their wise heads in solemn gravity, and tell how 
they would have acted had a son of theirs abused their confi- 
dence in such a manner. Thus his case would be the subject 
of comment and animadversion to the whole neighborhood. 
True, his friends and his father's friends would hasten to bid 
him welcome, and to rejoice in his restoration, but the evil- 
minded and the malignant would make him the subject of 
ridicule and biting sarcasm ; just as the ungodly always do 
when they see one of their companions humbling himself be- 
fore God. Nor is this an obstacle of a trifling nature to a 
penitent. Thousands perish in sin rather than surmount it, 
merely because their fear of man is greater than their fear of 
God. It is probably one that was duly weighed and measured, 
and well considered by the prodigal ; for he had come to him- 
self, was acting rationally ; and was taking his measures with 
that deliberate forethought which ensured success. 

3. Then, again, there were natural misgivings, as to whether 
his father would receive him in such a miserable and destitute 
condition. He knew his character, and perhaps had often seen 
him minister to the wants of the destitute, and had heard their 
thanksgiving as they left his door, fed and clothed. From all 
this he had ground to hope for a favorable issue. But his was 
a peculiar case. They had never received such blessings, nor 
abused them as he had done. Would not his conduct put even 
the love of a father to a severe test ? What if he should refuse 
to see him, and send his servants to drive him from his door ? 
If there were ground of hope in the character of his father, 
there was also ground for fearful misgiving from his own cha- 
racter. Thus his mind might alternate between hope and fear, 
according to the different views which he took of the subject. 
These feelings are not singular, or peculiar ; they are the most 



The Resolution. 107 

natural; and, because the most natural, the very opposite of 
what they should be. They are just what every sinner experi- 
ences before he ventures fully upon the mercy of God. 

But something was necessary to be done, and that immedi- 
ately, for his case was growing more desperate continually. 
His clothing was poor enough now, but his present employment 
would furnish him with no better ; and soon cold winds and 
pelting storms would come, and he would perish. Delay was 
not only dangerous, but it was death. The distance was great, 
as I have already remarked, and he was poorly provided ; yet 
he could but perish if he made the attempt. What if his 
squalid appearance did involve humiliation; others might be 
warned by his example and saved. They had seen his folly, 
and he resolved they should now see his penitence. What 
need he care for the derision of the evil-minded? Their 
opinions were of no consequence to him now ; for it was resto- 
ration to his father's confidence and love, and to the good will 
of the virtuous, that he desired. It was home, happiness, for- 
giveness that his heart yearned for. Whether his father would 
forgive him or not, he could only know when he stood in his 
presence, as a penitent, to crave his forgiveness. But if he 
waited until he could go clad in silks and velvet, he would stay 
away forever. Therefore he wisely resolved that he would 
attempt no such folly, but would go just as he was, in all his 
destitution and nakedness. He knew if his father received him 
he could easily supply all these wants; and if he did not 
receive him he would have no need of clothing, for he would 
soon die. Probably he judged correctly, that his pitiable con- 
dition would excite his father's sympathy ; and he resolved to 
make his woful plight his plea, and to say, "lam poor, and 
miserable and destitute of all things." 

Now, I appeal to your candid judgment to know if this was 
not the wisest, in fact the only practicable course ? Was it not 
the very best plea that he could make, all things considered ? 
So the Bible says, and so say we, that it is the best plea the 
sinner can make when he goes to God for pardon. He need not 
go about to establish a righteousness for himself, or to improve 



108 



Ruin and Restokation. 



his condition in any way, before he returns to his Heavenly 
Father, because, if God receives him, he has a robe already 
prepared that he will put upon him. It is the spotless robe of 
Christ's righteousness, which will qualify him to grace the cir- 
cles of the heavenly court ; a robe whose purity and fitness will 
never be questioned by angel or saint. 

Whenever our Heavenly Father sees a poor, weary, heavy 
laden sinner, coming just as he is, with all his sin and infirmi- 
ties, it moves his heart with pity, because he here beholds not 
only evidence of misery, but of genuine repentance. This is 
the class to whom he addresses the invitation, " Come unto me, 
all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
It is both an offense and an insult to come in any other way, 
because it is setting aside the provisions of the gospel, by which 
mercy is offered to the guilty, and not to the righteous. "He 
came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance !" And 
it will ever be the theme of enraptured song to the redeemed 
soul that it has been saved, "not by works of righteousness 
which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by 
the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." 
This is one of the simplest, and, at the same time, one of the 
most important truths revealed in the Word of God. And not 
only this, but it is one that commends itself to the understand- 
ing of every one. Suppose, for illustration, that this young 
man, for the purpose of imposing upon his father, had actually 
procured, in some way, a splendid robe of purple and gold, in 
which he had enveloped himself in such a manner as to conceal 
all his rags, and he had come into his presence boasting of his 
success, telling him he had farms and merchandise, and rich 
garments, but required a little more ready money just to relieve 
a temporary embarrassment, and he had come to see what; 
arrangement he could make with him for a sum sufficient for 
his present purpose. The father looks upon him with some 
degree of suspicion ; his story is too large to be credible, con- 
sidering the time he has been gone ; beside there are some 
things in his appearance that do not comport with the splendor 
of his robe. A corner is raised by a passing gust of wind, and 



The Resoltttio^. 



109 



he thinks that he discovers the naked skin beneath. To satisfy 
himself he takes hold of the beautiful garment, as if to examine 
it more closely, and with a single jerk tears it from his shoul- 
ders ; and there he stands dirty and ragged, worse, almost naked, 
an object of contempt rather than of pity ! Would not indig- 
nation and scorn, for the base imposition, be the most natural 
feelings of the father under these circumstances ? 

But this represents exactly what the prodigal toward God is 
attempting, when he strives by works of self-righteousness to 
make himself better, before he casts himself upon his sovereign 
mercy. The Omniscient eye penetrates the thin web of expe- 
dients and sees a heart covered with sin as with a moral leprosy, 
which the individual is attempting to conceal, instead of reveal- 
ing the malady to the Great Physician. 

The best plea before God is the helplessness and hopelessness 
of our case. The whole tenor and spirit of God's word is, 

" Come, ye sinners ! heavy laden, 
Lost and ruined by the fall, 
If you wait till you are better, 
Tou will never come at all ; 

Sinners, only, 
Christ the Saviour came to call. 
Let not sense of guilt prevent you 
Nor of fitness fondly dream; 
All the fitness he requireth, 
Is to feel your need of him ; 

This he gives you, 
'Tis the Spirit's rising beam." 

So thought the prodigal, and so he acted, when he said, " I 
will arise and go to my father." 

This was the turning point in his destiny ; the determination 
of his will, an act of the mind that governs all subsequent acts. 
His course after this was only carrying into execution the reso- 
lution here formed, and the happy results attained were but the 
consummation of a work that had its commencement here. 

This is a point of too much importance to pass over hastily, 
for it is one that decides the character and fate of the soul. Life 
and death, heaven and hell, are all pending upon this simple act 



110 



Ruin and Restoration. 



of the mind. An individual may desire religion, he may even 
mourn over his condition and prospects to the day of his death, 
but he will never take one heavenward step until the purpose is 
formed, inflexibly, to seek it with the whole heart. This is a 
necessary starting point, but even this of itself is not sufficient. 
The prodigal did not rest in the bare resolution, but when it was 
formed he arose immediately to put it into execution. 

Now, I doubt not but many who hear me have often resolved 
to become Christians, or, in other words, at some future time to 
seek the pardoning love of Grod. I cannot believe there are 
any who have dared to form deliberately a resolution that they 
will never become different in their character from what they 
are at present ; living without recognizing in any way the claims 
of God upon them, and dying without hope. Yet while they 
have resolved to become Christians, they have continued sin- 
ners, wandering further and further from home. Suppose that 
the prodigal had resolved to go to his father at some future 
time, and then joined himself again to his evil companions and 
resumed his former career with new zeal. Or, suppose that after 
he had formed this resolution he had continued where he was, 
waiting for some one to come and carry him, or even to know 
that every obstacle was removed so that he should encounter no 
difficulties by the way, what would have been the end of his 
career ? Every one must perceive that he would have died as 
he was, an alien and an outcast. 

But this is the way the Kingdom, of Heaven is sought by 
scores. The mind rests satisfied with the good resolution, wait- 
ing for more favorable circumstances, till suddenly grim death 
stands in their path and announces to the terrified soul that the 
work of life is done, and that it must now appear before God, 
not as a voluntary penitent to seek his pardon, but, involunta- 
rily to hear its doom. O, that I could impress this one great 
truth upon your minds, that whatever you purpose to do in this 
matter, now is the time ! Delay will not remove a single obsta- 
cle, but on the other hand these are accumulating continually ; 
beside the immense risk you incur in presuming upon an uncer- 
tain future. You may think that Grod will hold back the wheels 



The Resolution. 



Ill 



of time ; or that death, will pause and suspend his blow while 
you deliberate upon the matter ; but time will roll on and death 
level his dart irrespective of your condition or wants. 

Or, again, you may falter and hesitate in taking this impor- 
tant step, because you fear that you shall not have strength and 
perseverance to carry out your purpose. But is this a rational 
objection ? Had the prodigal any assurance that he should ever 
surmount all the difficulties in his way ? On the contrary, were 
not the probabilities against him ? Yet he resolved that if he 
perished it should be with his face towards home, and as near 
his father's door as possible. You have no assurance that you 
will live to eat the fruit of the tree which you plant, or to enjoy 
the beauty and fragrance of the flowers you sow, or that you 
will even occupy the house that you build. In short, you have 
no assurance of anything in this world, except that you will soon 
leave it forever. Yet this does not deter you from acting for 
the future. If the same objection were allowed to prevail in 
relation to secular matters, the wheels of progress would stop, 
and the human family would die out from starvation. But the 
parallel is not perfect ; for while G-od has given you no assurance 
in relation to these secular matters, he has, in the other case, 
given you all the assurance that the circumstances will admit. 
You have the oath of one who cannot lie, that he has no pleasure 
in your destruction. " As I live, saith the Lord Grod, I have no 
pleasure in the death of the wicked ; but that the wicked turn 
from his way and live." 

If this be God's disposition, the moment you place yourself 
in the condition here specified, by turning from your ways, you 
have the oath and promise of One who will uproot the founda- 
tion of heaven and earth sooner than His word shall fail. Can 
you form the resolution in your soul, that you, like the prodigal, 
will arise ? Not when these lectures are through, or when a 
more convenient season occurs, or when you are older, or are 
admonished by disease ; but now. You need not look forward 
to ultimate results ; for if you have grace to take this first step, 
grace will be given for each succeeding step, until you arrive at 
your journey's end. Will you form this resolution, then? For 



112 



Ruin and Restoration. 



this is the only question with which you have any concern at 
present. It is a simple one. Yet it is a point upon which your 
soul balances as on a pivot between heaven and hell. And if 
you resist this appeal, with all the light and conviction now 
resting upon your mind, you need never wonder why you are 
not a Christian, but you may wonder that you live in the enjoy- 
ment of a day and the means of grace. 

4. The next point is, the manner in which he accomplished 
his journey. The parable does not specify, therefore we are 
left to form our own opinion. I can only suggest what appears 
to me to be the most probable course. We do not read that his 
father had any knowledge of his conduct, or even of his locality, 
after he left the parental roof. Yet we are not to suppose that 
he was entirely indifferent to his fate ; and though facilities for 
intercommunication were few, he could easily have devised 
some means by which he might become acquainted with his 
way of life. During all that long period of reckless abandon- 
ment, while the son thought himself unnoticed and uncared for, 
the eye of the father, in one sense, was upon him. 

The ties that exist between a parent and a child are not easily 
sundered ; and though the parent may for wise reasons conceal 
his feelings, and even desire to have the child consider that he 
has ceased to regard his conduct with solicitude, yet he will 
watch, and grieve, and pray, that he may see or hear something 
that shall indicate a favorable change. Suppose this man to 
have been rich and noble, and the history does not contravene 
the opinion, but rather favors it, how easy it would have been 
for him to have sent a secret agent, to watch the course of his 
son, and to report to him. Or, he might have had friends, to 
whom he could have written, requesting that they should coun- 
sel and aid him when he desired to return. Thus those who 
refused him aid and comfort while he was pursuing his vicious 
course, might be the first to fly to his assistance when they heard 
his true position ; and they might have helped him on a stage in 
his journey, and given him letters to others of a like character. 

So the eye of God is upon every wandering prodigal. He 
represents himself as possessing all the feelings of a parent in 



The Resolution. 



113 



this respect. He says, " If I am a parent, where is my honor?" 
" Behold, I have nourished and brought up children, and they 
have rebelled against me." " Is Ephraim my dear son ? Is he 
a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly 
remember him still : therefore my bowels are troubled for him ; 
I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord. How shall 
I give thee up, Ephraim?" All these are expressions of tender 
solicitude on the part of our Heavenly Father toward his way- 
ward children. He does not give them up the moment they 
rebel, but He waits with infinite patience and forbearance for 
their return. Neither does He go to the opposite extreme, and 
interpose His omnipotence to restrain them from wandering, 
and force them to obedience. He does just as this parent did 
with his disobedient child ; permits them to eat of the fruit of 
their own ways and to be satisfied with their own devices. He 
will send no angel to rescue them from the ruin to which they 
are hastening. If they come to Him for pardon it must be 
voluntary, because the virtue of the act lies in the fact that it 
is of a voluntary character. 

But while he does this as a necessary part of his moral 
government, He has instituted means for their recovery when- 
ever they shall " come to themselves " and desire to be forgiven. 
And as a most important part of this arrangement He has 
directed his friends to seek out the prodigal in his unhappy and 
helpless condition and to help him onward in his heavenward 
journey. What course then should the penitent pursue, when 
his heart yearns for restoration and home? Obviously he 
should go to the friends of Grod, and tell them of his troubles 
and his determination. He needs that kind of sympathy and 
direction which they alone can give. Let him adopt this course 
and see if he will not feel the warm pressure of the hand, indi- 
cative of a heart full of sympathy and love. Perhaps you 
know of some brother in the church, whose soul seems to be 
so completely absorbed by the world that you have very little 
confidence in his piety. You believe that he cares more for a 
few dollars than he does for your soul, or even his own. Go to 
him and tell him that you are tired of the misery and degrada- 
15 



114 



Ruin and Restoration. 



lion of sin, and want to find your way to God. See if he will 
not drop everything else, that he may take you at least one 
stage on your journey? Perhaps you will find a development 
of character you did not expect, and learn to your surprise that 
the man has really a warm Christian heart in his breast, though 
sadly covered up by worldly rubbish. 

Are there not friends of your injured father on my right 
hand and on my left, that would abandon everything to engage 
in a work like this? Yet they appear to you, and to me, and 
to themselves, to be very cold and indifferent. But if they are 
the friends of (rod, the love is there. It only needs an object 
of sympathy to quicken it into life. If you wish sympathy 
and prayers and direction in a heavenward journey, there are 
scores who stand ready to take you by the hand and say, 
"Come thou with us, and we will do thee good." And if there 
be one cold-hearted backsliden disciple who cannot give an 
affirmative response, he needs to take the penitent's place him- 
self, and go again to the cross of Christ and look and wonder 
at the mighty sacrifice which was there made for a race of 
rebels. He needs to sit there and view the scene until emotions 
of sympathy, and love, and penitence begin to fill his soul. 

Perhaps in my rambling manner, for I could devise no better 
plan for presenting this subject, I have glanced at all the points 
of analogy that need be considered. You have seen one obsta- 
cle after another removed from the path of the wanderer, and 
his own mind brought to the determination to go home. Now, 
for a moment, contemplate the poor outcast, arousing all his 
remaining energies for the desperate effort. He gathers up his 
tattered garments and draws them around his emaciated body. 
He halts and shudders as he looks along the dreary expanse of 
the desert now open to his view, and stretching away to the 
horizon like a sea without a shore. Not a shrub or green spot 
appears to cheer the eye or to relieve the monotony of the 
scene. The rays of the meridian sun beat upon his head, and 
the scorching sand blisters his feet, " each step extorts a groan, 
telling of bodily suffering ; or a sigh, expressive of the deeper 
anguish of his heart. 0, what determination of will and forti- 



The Resolution. 



115 



tude of spirit it requires to travel the path of the penitent ! " 
No wonder his heart sinks within him at the prospect. But his 
resolution is unshaken. He has embarked in an enterprise of 
life and death, and. if he falls, he determines to fall in the 
homeward path. This is the first stage of his journey; turn 
your eyes to another scene. 

The desert has been traveled, and exercise has given new 
strength to his limbs. He has met on the way those who have 
whispered words of encouragement and hope in his ears. And 
now, as he presses forward, he sees a long blue line in the hori- 
zon, that gradually rises and looms up before his vision. O, 'tis 
a sight of gladness to his eye! There are his native hills. 
There, upon that sunny declivity, he watched his father's flocks 
when a boy, and higher up the mountain side he pursued the 
wild goat in his perilous course. Upon the summit of that 
swelling mound stands his father's house, where are clustered 
all his hopes. Visions of home now dance before his eyes, and 
cheer his heart. As he approaches his native mountains, he 
feels the invigorating atmosphere renovating his system, and 
infusing the strength and buoyancy ot youth into his limbs. 

Soon the shades of evening begin to fall on his path; but 
over that hallowed spot there gleams a lone bright star, and 
with his eye fixed upon this as a friendly beacon he disregards 
the darkness and perils of the night. The star sinks down and 
disappears behind the hill, and then comes, as from the very 
bosom of the mountain, a faint twinkling light, not so clear and 
brilliant as the other ; but 0, what emotions does it awaken in 
his breast, for it comes from the windows of his father's dwell- 
ing ! Now he sees, in imagination, the little group assembled 
around the hearth-stone ; perhaps they are talking of him. 
What though the night be dark, and threatening clouds begin 
to roll along the sky, and ominous peals of thunder to reverbe- 
rate among the hills ; he heeds them not, for all is light and 
peace within his soul, and in the morning he will be at home. 
He will see those dear faces once more, and enjoy the blissful 
emotion of confessing his faults and of being forgiven. There 
is no faltering or fainting now. Every step grows firmer be- 
cause it places him nearer homa 



116 



Ruin and Restoration. 



The morning dawns, and the sun sheds his golden beams 
over the hill side ; there in the distance he discerns the old 
familiar dwelling, now fully revealed to his view. This, at 
least, remains unchanged. The shepherds are seen winding 
their way up the mountain, followed by their bleating flocks 
and lowing herds. But in the door of that dwelling there is 
one object that fixes his gaze and absorbs all his thoughts. 
There stands a venerable form, slightly bent by the weight of 
years, his thin locks waving in the summer breeze, looking 
serenely and gratefully upon the beautiful landscape spread out 
before him. One glance, even, at the distance, assures him that 
his father lives, unchanged in appearance, and unchanged in 
affection. He may venture to appear before him. 

My hearers, were you ever away from home for long, long 
months, or longer years ? You will then remember how the 
moment your face was set homeward, the imagination would 
outstrip the flying cars, and your heart would reach there 
quicker than the telegraphic lightning. You see every familiar 
face, and even inanimate objects present themselves for a share 
of your thoughts and affections, because they are associated 
with the idea of home. You well remember, too, how your 
impatience increased as the distance diminished, and every 
moment of delay was the occasion of vexation and complaints. 
Such is the delight of going home. 

Now, in the application of this scene, let me ask you if you 
have experienced the purer and holier emotions of going home, 
as a penitent, to your Heavenly Father. The difficulties which 
I have depicted are, as you perceive, after all, only creatures 
of imagination ; such as the poor, distrustful, irresolute wanderer 
conjures up of himself; and not such as God interposes in his 
path. They are soon surmounted by a resolute spirit. The 
path of the penitent is not so painful and difficult as you 
imagine it to be ; and the tears of penitence are not like the hot, 
scalding tears of remorse. It is a sweet and blissful sorrow, to 
sit at the foot of the cross and weep for our sins. And it is an 
emotion of heaven to feel assurance that atoning blood has so 
purified our hearts from defilement that God is our reconciled 
father and heaven is our home. 



I 



Tue Resolution 117 

You roam through the world> as the prodigal did, pleasing 
yourself with life's passing show, without a home for your soul. 
But the time is coming when it will need one ; just such a home 
as Grod proffers to you ! These ties that now bind your heart 
so firmly to your earthly home will all be broken. These 
cherished objects of your love will all leave you, and your 
home will become desolate ; robbed of all its attractions. The 
very house you inhabit will be occupied by another or will fall 
to ruins. In a few years, where will be this most hallowed 
place on earth ? Yet, you have no other home in prospect. It 
is a melancholy pleasure to visit the home of one's childhood. 
Where, once, father and mother, and brothers and sisters, all 
dwelt together in love, and to see it desolate and ruined by 
neglect ; or to find it the abode of strangers ; and then to turn 
your feet into the old graveyard, where generation after gene- 
ration of parents, and children, are buried and forgotten, there 
to behold the group that once made home delightful, almost 
entire, lying, side by side, waiting for the resurrection day; 
when there will be a reunion of those once loved bodies as well 
as of the spirits which inhabited them. 

Have you the prospect of such a home ? A home for your 
soul, when this tabernacle of clay shall be taken down, and laid 
again in the bosom of the earth ? If not, ! how cheerless the 
prospect ! How terrible the thought of death ! With this sus- 
taining hope the spirit may bear with fortitude the assaults of 
disease. It may wrestle with the agony of dissolution, and rise, 
calm and serene, above the clouds that darken the valley of 
death ; for there is light within the soul. The night may wax 
darker, and the storm grow fiercer, and the struggle more pain- 
fully intense, but it will be of short duration ; and, when the 
morning comes, it will be at home ; home in the bosom of God ; 
home in the society of those it loved on earth ; home among the 
angels and redeemed spirits of the just. All this, and infinitely 
more than tongue can tell, is pending upon the simple question 
that I have proposed to you to-night. 



IX. THE PLEA. 



FATHER, I HAVE SINNED AGAINST HEAVEN, AND BEFORE THEE, AND AM NO MORE WORTHY 
TO BE CALLED THY SON : MAKE ME AS ONE OF THY HIRED SERVANTS. -Luke XV : 18, 19. 

It may be thought by some that I am putting a forced construc- 
tion on many incidents connected with this parable, and dealing 
more with a work of imagination than with sober realities. But, 
if I understand the design of this beautiful allegory, it is to show 
the emotions and conduct of a true penitent, and to illustrate 
the character and disposition of our Heavenly Father towards 
those who seek his forgiveness. 

The Bible develops great ideas ; but does not consume time, 
by entering into all those details which are merely gratifying to 
the curiosity, or pleasing to the imagination. Here we have a 
sketch containing the outlines and the prominent features of a 
sublime picture ; but the filling up, the clothing with skin and 
muscles, and coloring with light and shade, so as to give it the 
appearance of life, is left to the imagination of the reader. "Were 
we only concerned with the narrative, or the fact that he had 
wandered away from home, fell into evil company, and became 
miserable, and with its counterpart, that upon sober reflection he 
resolved to abandon his evil ways and go home, and that he was 
kindly received by his father, we have all this in the parable. 
But if we wish to get at the important doctrine here disclosed, 
and at the spiritual instruction which it is intended to convey, 
it is evident that we must enter into an analysis of his feelings 
and the operations of his mind. This is what I have attempted. 
When I have viewed him as a penitent, I have understood from 
the term what kind of emotions are embraced in this idea. And 
when I have spoken of the difficulties in the way of his making 
a humble confession of sin, with a firm purpose of soul to aban- 



The Plea. 119 

don it, I have depicted his case just as all who have been in 
similar circumstances have described theirs, and as my own 
experience confirms. 

In my last lecture I traced his course homeward, until he 
came within sight of his fathers house ; and were I intent only 
upon presenting a pleasant picture to the view, the proper 
course would be to commence at that point, and describe the 
scene that followed. But in order to carry out my design I 
must go back to the point where he formed his resolution, for 
it was then that he also decided upon the plea that he would 
offer. These two acts of the mind stand in juxtaposition in 
the narrative as they probably did in their inception, but not in 
their execution. The resolution to go home was acted upon 
immediately ; but the plea could not have been offered until 
after the journey was performed. Hence, in analyzing the state 
of his mind, and examining the nature of his plea, it is neces- 
sary to separate one from the other, as the subjects themselves 
are distinct. 

It was natural for him to suppose that his father would ex- 
pect some account of his past life and wasted substance ; for 
this was a duty that he owed his parent, which must be ren- 
dered before any real confidence could be re-established between 
them. He had abandoned the idea of claiming anything on 
account of a relationship which he had once repudiated ; but 
while he sought the privileges and protection of a servant, he 
must account to his father as a son. What, therefore, should 
be the plea ? There were three, either of which he might have 
adopted, had his repentance been insincere, or assumed merely 
for the sake of receiving the benefit of forgiveness. 

1. One was justification. He might have claimed that he 
had done right ; or at all events the best he had power to do. 
But as he was a convicted man and a true penitent, his con- 
science forbade such a plea. He knew that if he appealed to 
his fathers sense of justice, and he were to be tried by the 
inflexible rule of law, there could be no hope. 

2. Another plea was extenuation. But this would of course 
challenge investigation ; beside whatever extenuating circum- 



120 



Ruin and Restoration. 



stances there might be, they could only mitigate the severity 
of his punishment and not secure pardon or restoration. This 
is the effect of extenuation in all cases. It does not justify and 
restore, but mitigates the severity of our judgment. 

3. A third course, and the one he adopted, was a frank and 
free confession, with an appeal to mercy. The spirit of his 
confession was : " You see my deep degradation, and that all 
you might suppose in such a case, as the cause, is true. I am 
guilty of all the sins that you can imagine, and have no excuse 
to offer, for they were committed against your advice and remon- 
strance. I perceive now that you were right and that I was 
wicked and disobedient. My own heart condemns me, and I 
knew that you must condemn me also. But for the sake of 
the love you bore me when I was an innocent child ; for the 
sake of the deplorable condition to which I have reduced my- 
self, pity and forgive, and let my present sufferings and remorse 
be my sufficient punishment !" Was not this the wisest course 
as well as the one most likely to touch the sympathies of a 
parent's heart ? 

I wish now to leave the prodigal for a season, while we turn 
aside from the direct course of the narrative to notice some of 
the different pleas, by which sinners insult the majesty of God 
and ruin themselves. His plea was the result of a truly peni- 
tent spirit; therefore the only one his mind could entertain for 
a moment. Had he been influenced by merely selfish motives, 
he would probably have fallen into the fatal error of attempting 
some mode of self-justification, and thus ruined his own cause 
as thousands do when they attempt to impose upon God. 

I. We are to understand, then, that he did not plead a sinful 
nature as justification. This is an argument often found in the 
mouths of the wicked. When expressed in its true language 
it is, that God has created them with a disposition to sin. That 
this is a law of their nature, which they can no more change 
than the earth can choose some other orbit; or revolve in a 
manner contrary to its established law. They sin by a neces- 
sity of their physical and moral constitution, as much as the 



The Plea. 



121 



lion devours his prey, or the eagle soars, or the serpent crawls, 
in obedience to their natural instincts. Without consuming 
time, by exhibiting the fallacy of arguing by analogies drawn 
from inanimate or unintelligent objects and applying them to 
rational, moral beings, it is sufficient to show that this is a doc- 
trine which strikes at the very foundation of all government, 
human and divine ; therefore cannot be true. If sin be not 
voluntary, then of course it is not culpable ; and it is the height 
of injustice and cruelty to hold the transgressor accountable, 
or subject him to punishment for crime committed against God 
or society : for the objection applies to one as much as to the 
other. If we sin because we have no power to do otherwise, 
who is to blame, but the Being who created us with such a 
nature ? And if He be the author of our sin, how cruel and 
malignant to punish man for what God had done himself? 
What better justification can an individual need than such a 
plea as this, if it were true ? A plea that makes no appeal to 
mercy, but simply to justice. And if it be not true, what 
greater insult can be offered to God than to prefer such a bold 
impious charge : a charge that exculpates the sinner, by incul- 
pating God himself? It is in effect saying, " all this misery has 
come upon me, not by my own folly and wickedness, but by 
your sovereign creative power. I have not injured you, but 
you have injured me." Is not the very idea, when expressed 
in plain language, shocking to all our notions of propriety, and 
even opposed to our own consciousness? We know that it is 
not true, because we are conscious of the power of acting 
voluntarily. Therefore, it must of necessity close the door of 
hope, and steal the heart of Infinite Mercy against sentiments 
of pity. 

God has sustained his position as a moral governor, by im- 
planting in the hearts of his subjects a natural sense of justice, 
and consciousness of freedom that runs parallel to his law; 
responding to all the declarations of his word, " as face answer- 
eth to face in the glass." Let a man go and prowl upon 
society, steal and rob and murder, and then come into court 
and plead that he has a very sinful nature and a strong natural 
16 



9 



122 



Ruin and Restoration. 



pre-disposition to do these tilings, and see what respect would 
be had to his plea? The judge might reply; so had the law 
a strong natural pre-disposition to hang such characters. How 
unfortunate it would be that those two pre-dispositions should 
be so directly opposed to each other ? I need not apply this 
illustration. 

II. This then of course was a plea the prodigal never thought 
of offering : nor did he plead the strength of temptation. The 
idea is intimately associated with the other; yet there is a 
marked distinction between the two. One comes from within 
the heart itself, the other from without. Doubtless it was trne 
in his case, that the fascinations of sinful pleasure, acting as 
they did upon a heart in love with sin presented a powerful 
array of temptations to his mind. Wicked men and artful 
women, continually plying a character naturally weak and va- 
cillating, destitute of fixed principles, or of moral courage, 
could not fail to secure their object. He had left a quiet, 
secluded country home, inexperienced and artless. How then 
should he be prepared to escape all the toils and snares which 
were laid in his path, by those depraved creatures whose busi- 
ness it is to decoy souls to ruin ! It seems as though he might 
have made out a case here if anywhere. Why then did he not 
offer it, at least as an extenuation of his offense ? 

The reason is simply because he knew better. His father 
might have asked what business he had in such company at all ? 
Had he not been thoroughly warned against it ? Had he not 
heard the Rabbis read in the Synagogue, "My son, if sinners 
entice thee, consent thou not," and read the warnings and 
threatenings of Grod himself, as delivered by the mouth of His 
prophets ? Or if he had been deceived and beguiled into evil 
company, why had he returned to their society after he had 
discovered their true character ? These were questions which 
it would have been difficult for him to have answered in such 
a way as to make out a case. The truth is, these temptations, 
powerful and overwhelming as they might have been, were 
made so by the voluntary consent of the mind. If there were 



The Plea. 



123 



no love for a particular sin ; if it were not practised and 
cherished by the soul, until that propensity becomes mon- 
strously developed, temptation would have no power over it. 

To illustrate this, all the array of decanters, and glasses, and 
tinsel, and mirrors, and yellow tissue paper, hanging in gay 
festoons, that money or art can produce, would present no 
temptation to the temperate man. He can look at them with 
indifference or loathing. If the spectacle excited any emotion 
at all within his breast, it would be a laudable curiosity to see 
what effect a good-sized paving stone thrown into their midst, 
would produce. But the poor victim of intemperance must 
close his eyes, and dart past the door as he would by the house 
of contagion. He must not look, or hear, or smell, if he does, 
he is overpowered by temptation. Why this difference ? Sim- 
ply because one has never transgressed the law of temperance, 
he has no appetite ; the other has cherished and practised this 
sin, until his thirst is more raging and intense than that of fever. 
If such a man continues to resort to the place where temptation 
meets him, and drunkards assail him, of course he must fall. 
The temptation is, in fact, overpowering and irresistible. But 
does he not sin just as voluntarily as any man, when he directs 
his steps toward the spot where he knows that he will be 
tempted ? 

Such is the nature of all those overpowering temptations that 
we plead as an excuse for sin. Instead of praying, as we are 
taught, " lead us not into temptation," we rush voluntarily into 
it, and then plead the strength of temptation as an excuse. 
We may amuse ourselves now with these delusions, but we 
shall never dare offer them to the Searcher of hearts, when we 
come to him seeking pardon, or when we stand before his tribu- 
nal in judgment. Simply because we know that we can resist 
sin if we choose. If we did not cherish and practice and love 
it, temptation would have no power over us. 

III. He did not plead unkindness on his father's part in per- 
mitting him to go away, because he knew the proposition for 
leaving home had come from himself, and that his conduct had 



124 



Ruin and Restoration. 



been contrary to his father's will. There are many who are 
continually vexing themselves with the question, why does 
God, who is all-powerful, permit the human family to commit 
sin ? Why does He not interpose effectual restraints, and thus 
avert all the calamities which have befallen us in consequence 
of transgression ? As a merely speculative question this is one 
that is very natural for us to raise, and its solution, so far as 
it is practicable, throws much light upon the great principles 
of His government. But as a plea, or au apology for sinful 
acts, it is exactly tantamount to the plea of a sinful nature, 
because it is designed to exculpate the sinner by throwing the 
blame upon the ruler. 

I can reply to this objection in no better way than by inquir- 
ing why you permit your child to transgress your commands ? 
Do you ask how you are to prevent it ? My answer is, in the 
same way that God can prevent you from sinning, destroy his 
freedom, shut him up and chain him down. But you reply, 
that this would also destroy the virtue of obedience and anni 
hilate all those feelings of love and confidence which now exist. 
It would make obedience a matter of necessity, and not of 
choice, proceeding, as it now does, from filial love and grati 
tude. Exactly so. And what is true in this case is equally 
true in the other. A wise parent places before the mind of the 
child the consequences of obedience and disobedience, and 
leaves him to act voluntarily. If he obeys, he secures his love 
and the approbation of his own conscience. If he disobeys, he 
must abide the consequences. 

This is precisely what God has done, and the only course he 
could adopt without destroying the freedom of his subjects and 
annihilating virtue from the world. And it is the course which 
this parent pursued toward his wayward son, and which is 
doubtless given us as an illustration of the great principles upon 
which He governs His universe. The father saw that his son 
was restless and discontented. He might have forbidden his 
leaving, or withheld from him the means of procuring sinful 
indulgence ; but the son would have submitted with a rebellious 
and disobedient spirit. He would have regarded his father as 



The Plea. 



125 



an oppressor, and would have sought in every way to vex and 
annoy him. Having arrived at maturity, the father thought it 
was better for himself, better for the son, and better for the 
household, that he should go and act independently. It is not 
probable that he went away from such a parent unwarned of 
the dangers that would beset his path. The language of the 
father would be to this effect: "You have desired to go out 
into the great world and act for yourself. This may be a laud- 
able purpose, or a wicked desire, according to the course you 
intend to adopt. If you seek to commence business for your- 
self, under more favorable circumstances than are presented 
here, and to pursue an enterprising and industrious life, I 
should be sorry to interpose any obstacle in your way. But if 
it be merely to get away from me, and the restraining influences 
of home, that you may abandon yourself to all the gaieties and 
frivolities of a wicked world, you know well what my feelings 
are ; though I shall have no power to prevent the consequences. 
My duty, as a parent, is to warn you faithfully of the dangers 
in your course, and then leave you to act your own choice. 
And while I give you the means of pursuing an honorable 
business, I, at the same time, afford you the means of dissipa- 
tion, if you choose to pervert them. This money may be a 
blessing or a curse, just as you employ it. The responsibility 
now lies with you ; mine is ended. Eemember the words of 
Solomon : ' If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; but 
if thou scornest, thou alone shall bear it.' I give you, also, this 
little book, that I have written with my own hand, containing 
rules by which I wish you to be governed, and advice under 
perplexing circumstances that may occur, when you will need 
the counsel of one more experienced than yourself. Moreover, 
and above all, I give this beautiful scroll, containing the writ- 
ings of Moses and the prophets, and the proverbs of Israel's 
wisest king. Make this your study and your guide, and if 
misfortune befall you, remember that there is one who will 
always stand ready to befriend you." This we may suppose 
to be something very similar to the parting instruction which 
the father gave his son, as he was about to leave the parental 



126 Ruin and Restoration. 

roof, perhaps forever. It would be a very proper course for 
any man to take under similar circumstances. But the point 
is, with what grace could that son, after he had disregarded all 
this counsel, had perverted and squandered all the means which 
he had received, and in everything done the very opposite to 
what he knew to be his father's will, come home and reproach 
his parent for permitting him to wander away, and bring this 
misery upon himself? I answer, with just the same grace, 
that the sinner can plead that God has the power, and should 
exercise it in restraining him from sin. Has He not done 
everything that we have supposed was done by this parent, or 
that any parent could do ? Has he not told us that the very 
means which He gives to make us happy, may be so perverted 
as to be the cause of our ruin ? Has He not abundantly warned 
us of the consequences of transgression, and even placed all 
along our path monuments, beacons and finger-boards, lest we 
should wander ignorantly from the right way ? Is it not written 
on the page of sacred and secular history that " the wages of 
sin is death ?" " That the wicked are like the troubled sea when 
it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt V Are not the 
retributions of his natural law operating all around us and with- 
in us, demonstrating to our eyes, and to our ears, and to our 
consciences, that when we sin against God we ruin our own 
souls ? Are not continually recoiling upon the heads of 
offenders, burying them beneath a mountain of iniquity which 
they have reared to crush others, and rolling back from one 
generation to another, visiting the iniquities of the fathers even 
upon the children ? Now shall we ask why He permits us to 
sin, or to wander away from Him when the consequences are 
so clearly revealed, and the reason is so obvious ? Or shall we 
dare to offer as a plea for transgression that Grod could prevent 
us if he would ? No man's conscience will sustain him in such 
a position, because he practices himself upon exactly the same 
principle, in the government of his children, that God has 
adopted. And a plea that will not be sustained by the con- 
science of the offender will not be likely to find favor with 
God. 



The Plea. 



127 



IV. But I must notice one more negative feature of the sub- 
ject before I proceed to speak more particularly of the effect 
of his plea. He did not attempt to make terms with his father. 
His language in such a case would have been : " I confess that 
I have done wrong in wandering away and spending your 
money, but I now desire to repent!" Notice the form of that 
expression — •" desire to repent! And if you will receive me 
as a son, and restore me again to the privileges of sonship, I 
will try to obey your commands." 

How would such a plea, or rather negotiation, appear in his 
mouth ? Yet it is the spirit, and in many cases the very lan- 
guage of those who would fain persuade themselves and others 
that they are penitents towards God. They often say, "If I 
knew that my sins were forgiven, and if I felt the enjoyment 
of religion in my heart, I would take up the cross and follow 
Christ." What is this but making conditions with God, and 
very hard conditions, too. It is like the man who claims his 
wages before he has fulfilled the terms. It is asking for the 
fruits of penitence and obedience while there is neither a peni- 
tent heart nor obedient spirit. It is seeking for evidence of a 
thing that does not exist, and cannot, while the heart is in such 
a frame. It is saying that if God will fill my soul with the 
joys of salvation, and the assurance of eternal life, I will strive 
to obey His commands and honor Him before the world. But 
if He declines this modest request, and withholds this token of 
His approbation, what then ? Why I will continue in disobe- 
dience and seek to dishonor Him, so far as my example goes. 
O, what a total misconception, distortion and perversion of all 
the great truths of religion does a course of this kind evince ! 
It is indicative of anything rather than a penitent spirit. The 
language of true penitence is, " God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner." Or, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before 
Thee." 

" Show pity, Lord, Lord, forgive ; 
Let a repenting rebel live ; 
Are not thy mercies large and free ? 
May not a sinner trust in Thee ?" 



128 



Ruin and Restoration. 



The joys of religion are the result of holy obedience. They 
proceed from a "conscience void of offence toward God and 
man." They are the fruits of faith and love and holy princi- 
ples implanted in the heart, which are to be developed and 
matured by the means of grace ; becoming stronger and brighter 
as the soul approaches the scene of its exaltation, for " the path 
of the just is a shining light which shineth more and more unto 
the perfect day." None of these expedients were resorted to 
by the prodigal, because, as I have already remarked, he was a 
true penitent. He had just views of his own conduct and his 
father's character, and clearly perceived the position which it 
was proper for him to assume. It was his place to ask for 
mercy. His father's to prescribe the conditions upon which he 
should be pardoned. 

All these pleas which we have considered, and many more 
of a similar character, are indicative of an impenitent and rebel- 
lious spirit, and can have no other effect than most deeply to 
offend the Being, whose eye looks in and through the heart, and 
who knows not only its feelings but its motives. They place 
the soul at once in a most hopeless and desperate position, 
where not one promise of Grod's word can cheer, or one purpose 
of mercy can reach it. He could just as consistently pardon 
one of those rebel outcasts, who tremble as they believe, as to 
pardon one of the human race who should come to him with 
such sentiments in the heart. What they desire is not pardon 
because they have sinned against Him, not to leave off sinning 
because they abhor it ; but pardon, that they may escape pun- 
ishment. Salvation, that they may shun hell and gain heaven. 

The prodigal has settled definitely in his own mind what his 
course should be, and as he approached the crisis of his fate, he 
began to feel that calmness and serenity of spirit and that dawn- 
ing of hope which results from a good purpose in the process of 
execution. He was a convicted sinner when he saw and loathed 
the baseness of his conduct. A converted sinner when he arose 
and turned his face homeward. This was turning from sin, 
which is just what the term implies, converto, to turn from ; but 
not an adopted son until he was received by the father and 



The Plea. 



129 



locked in his parental embrace. Of these two states or condi- 
tions, one may be embraced in the other, yet the difference is 
that one is the act of the sinner himself, the other the act of the 
Being sinned against. Therefore it was proper to represent him 
as feeling that confidence and hope which results from conscious 
sincerity of purpose and a full determination to do all in his 
power to atone for his past delinquency. It was in this frame 
of spirit that we left him pressing forward in sight of his home, 
with all the associations awakened in his breast which the 
familiar scenes of his youth would recall. 

The day had just dawned upon the eastern landscape, and the 
sun was shedding his beams of golden light upon the hillside. 
The good old patriarch stood in the door of his dwelling, look- 
ing down the winding path ; and, as he gazed, he beheld a sight 
no doubt familiar to his eyes ; it was that of a wanderer, naked 
and hungry, coming up to seek a morning repast at his hospita- 
ble table. He was a man of benevolence ; and incidents of this 
kind were not so unusual as to excite his surprise. But there 
was something so peculiarly wretched and forlorn in the appear- 
ance of this individual, as he seemed to be hastening forward 
with all the eagerness his bruised and bleeding feet would per- 
mit, as to attract his attention ; he says to himself, " who can he 
be, and what can be the reason of his haste ? Perhaps it is one 
of our oppressed countrymen, fleeing from the pursuit of Eoman 
soldiers, or just escaped from a Eoman prison ; persecuted by 
the hateful tyrant because of his love to his religion or his coun- 
try. If it is, God forbid that I should deny him hospitality, 
though it cost me my life ; but no, that cannot be, for he is a 
mere stripling, a youth — though he halts like a man of three- 
score. One so young cannot have been engaged in treasonable 
schemes. More like, he is some wild wanderer who has reduced 
himself to beggary by his vices ; I will feed, and clothe, and 
counsel him, for he may have a father and mother who are 
mourning over his loss, as I mourn for my poor wayward boy — 
now dead. Yes, he must be dead ; for I have heard nothing from 
him since the terrible famine commenced in the west, and then 
he was wandering about the country, destitute. 0, dreadful, 

17 



130 



Ruin and Restoration. 



that he should die thus, amid strangers, unmourned, perhaps 
unburied, when I would have relieved all his wants ! 0, my 
son, my son, would to God that I had died for thee." Thus 
soliloquizes the patriarch. But, as the stranger comes nearer, 
his form seems familiar, and he continues : " Possibly this may 
be my poor prodigal, after all ; my sight grows dim, I cannot 
see clearly, but he appears about his size and age. The color 
of the hair is his. Do my old eyes deceive me, or is that the 
scroll I gave him at parting ? Ah, I see his face now, it is my 
son, my lost son !" He waits not to hear his confession, or his 
tale of distress ; he sees his misery, and knows his repentance at 
a glance ; his heart fills with compassion ; he runs and falls on 
his neck and kisses him ; he takes the poor, ragged outcast in 
his arms and hugs him to his bosom, and they weep together. 
" Father," sobs the son, "lam not worthy to be received thus. 
I am not worthy to be called thy son. You know not how very 
wicked I have been. I only ask to be made a servant, and to 
dwell under your roof." 

" Yes, my son, I know all ; I see it all. You are wretched, 
but you are penitent : you shall still be my son. Take off these 
vile rags. Bring out a robe — the best robe — and clothe him 
as becomes a son of mine ; and put a ring on his finger, in token 
of his restoration ; and put shoes on his blistered feet, for this 
is my son ; he was dead, but is alive again ; he was lost, and is 
found. He is restored to my love, and he shall be restored to 
his position. None shall reproach him with his past delinquen- 
cies, for I will blot them out of the book of my remembrance, 
and they shall be remembered no more against him forever. 
And when they shall see him clothed in that pure robe, radiant 
with silver and precious gems, which was wrought for the mar- 
riage supper of my daughter, who shall suspect that he ever 
wore such garments as these ?" 

Every child, and we all have been children once, knows how 
sweet it is, after a long experience of the wretchedness of dis- 
obedience, to fall down in penitence at a parent's feet, and feel 
that all the guilt of transgression is forgiven. It is a blissful 
moment. It is the joy of pardoned sin. It is the possession 



The Plea. 



131 



of a peaceful conscience. And precisely the same in kind, but 
greater in degree, is the bliss of the soul that experiences the 
forgiving love of God. It is the most exalted and purest hap- 
piness known this side of heaven. It is heaven begun in the 
soul. 

Now I wish to ask, in conclusion, whether you suppose this 
parable is a fiction, uttered without an object, except to amuse 
the hearers or readers ; or whether it does give a true represen- 
tation of the work of repentance and salvation ? The character 
of the Being who uttered it is, surely, enough to protect it from 
the charge of an idle and senseless romance, for it is in the 
words of One who spake as never man spake. And, if admit- 
ted to be the last, I ask you to place your finger upon a point 
or feature in the case that has the appearance of injustice. Tell 
me wherein the father departed a hair's breadth from the strictest 
rule of propriety, or wherein the son could have adopted a 
more rational course than that which he pursued when he 
returned, and then carry out the analogy and see wherein God 
has been unreasonable in his demands upon you, and what 
your conduct has been toward, him. Some earthly parents, 
either from mistaken views or from the obduracy of their own 
hearts, would have waited and compelled the son to humble 
himself in the dust, and even beg the crumbs from the servants' 
table, before they would have forgiven such an abuse of their 
confidence. But a father, who had mourned over his lost son, 
who was anxiously watching and hoping for his return, whose 
heart was full of love and sympathy, would do just as this 
father did. His appearance was sufficient evidence of his state. 

Who then are really the parties so vividly pictured to the 
mind ? Who is the wayward child that has demanded his por- 
tion now, and who has been following the devices of his own 
wicked heart until misery, deep and lasting, has seized upon 
his soul ? I say to every weary, heavy laden sinner, it is you. 
And who is the Being that has long mourned over your way- 
wardness, and has been anxiously watching your return ? Who 
is it that has sent forth His servants to proclaim that all 
things are ready, come unto the marriage ; and that though 



132 



Ruin and Resolution. 



thousands have already come, yet there is room. Room in the 
provisions of the gospel, room in the Father's heart, room in 
the church militant, and room in the Kingdom of Heaven? 
Who has said, " greater love hath no man than this, that a man 
lay down his life for his friends ?" Who has wept over sinners, 
saying, " 0, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, * * * how often would I 
have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her brood under her 
wings, but ye would not ?" 

It is not an earthly father, whose affections and sympathies 
may change. Not an earthly king who offers to clothe you 
with the livery of his court, and make you an attendant on his 
throne. But it is the great I Am. He that liveth forever and 
ever. He that made you, that made the world. Yea, the hea- 
vens, also, are the works of his hands ; that promises to invest 
you with the livery of heaven, to clothe your soul with salva- 
tion, as with a garment. 

This is what Grod has done, and purposes as the crowning act 
of his love, when all his plans of mercy shall have been accom- 
plished. But, of course, he must do it in a way consistent with 
his character and position. He cannot be reconciled to an indi- 
vidual who is charging all the guilt and misery of his life upon 
Himself, nor for a moment admit a plea that shall exonerate the 
sinner by convicting his Creator of wrong. He has no pur- 
poses of mercy for such, but will lay judgment to the line, and 
righteousness to the plummet. If justice be what they demand, 
justice he will give, and not mercy. But when he perceives 
one renouncing all these lying pretexts, and crying as David 
did, " Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, that thou mightest 
be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judg- 
est." " Have mercy according to the multitude of thy tender 
mercies." His salvation is very near that soul. 

When He beholds us in the blindness of our minds, groping 
our way to the mercy-seat, like the father, He sees us a great 
way off, and stretches out His hand to help. When he beholds 
us poor, and naked, and unfit to mingle in the shining ranks 
above, He brings forth the spotless robe, and envelops our sin- 
polluted souls, so that we may appear without spot, and blame- 



The Plea. 



133 



less. All that we require, as a preparation for heaven, He 
supplies, and then urges the acceptance of His proffered grace. 
When we consider the nature of the blessings thus offered, the 
character and position of the Being who bestows them,\is it not 
an infatuation, equal to insanity, to turn away and perish, 
miserably in sin, without repentance or a hope of heaven ? 



X. THE RESTORATION. 



AND BEING HITHER THE FATTED CALF, AND KILL IT ; AND LET US EAT, AND BE MEBBT : 
FOB THIS MY SON "WAS DEAD, AND IS ALIVE AGAIN; HE WAS LOST, AND IS FOUND. 
I SAT UNTO YOU, THAT LIKEWISE JOY SHALL BE IN HEAVEN OVEB ONE SINNEB THAT 
EEPENTETH, MORE THAN OVER NINETY AND NINE JUST PERSONS WHICH NEED NO 

repentance.—- Luke xv : 23, 24, and 7. 

I have placed these two passages together because they contain 
substantially the same idea. They represent the joy which is 
felt at the recovery of anything valuable, that has been lost. 
The chapter contains three short parables. The first is that of 
a man who had a hundred sheep, and, haying lost one, rejoiced 
more at its recovery, than over the ninety and nine. Then to 
show the application, the Saviour adds : "I say unto you, that 
likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 
more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no 
repentance." The second is that of the woman who had ten pieces 
of silver, and having lost one, is represented as rejoicing more at 
its recovery than over all her remaining treasures. Then fol- 
lows very nearly the same expression : " Likewise, I say unto 
you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one 
sinner that repenteth." And finally we have the more elaborate 
allegory of the Prodigal Son, closing with a general demonstra- 
tion of joy on the part of the household at his restoration. We 
may notice here that the elder brother reproaches the father, 
with evincing greater affection toward a wild and undutiful son 
than he manifested for one who had always been obedient to 
his commands ; and for making a greater demonstration of joy, 
than was consistent with the character he had maintained. He 
does not seem to have taken into consideration the fact that the 
father rejoiced, not because his son had devoured his living 
with harlots ; but because he had abandoned his evil ways and 
returned to a life of virtue. 



The Restokation. 



135 



It is often remarked of parents, who are so unfortunate as to 
have children of this character, that they seem to possess a 
greater love for them than for those who have never trans- 
gressed; but the remark is unjust. It is only the peculiar 
circumstances of the case that awaken emotions and call forth 
sympathies, which are not manifested in ordinary cases. A 
man may be the parent of two children ; one may amuse him 
by his childish drolleries, the other excite his pride by the 
developments of dawning genius ; thus they each have their 
peculiar traits of character. He is pleased with one for one 
quality, and with the other for its opposite ; but so far as the 
affections of his heart are concerned, one occupies no larger 
space there than the other. He is conscious of no difference, 
and they discover none ; but let either one of them be laid 
upon a bed of sickness and suffering; let the case become 
alarming so that he trembles for the result, and he will hang 
over the pillow of the little sufferer with breathless anxiety ; 
every sympathy and affection of the heart will seem to be 
absorbed in that particular child. One would scarcely think 
he had another. Now every person can perceive, that it is the 
suffering that is experienced, and the danger to which the child 
is exposed, which produces a development of feeling on the 
part of the parent, that otherwise would be uncalled for. This 
too is the reason why parents sometimes seem to be so much 
concerned for a wayward and disobedient child, as to make the 
impression on the minds of others, that their attachment is even 
stronger toward such a one than for those who constitute the 
real joy of their hearts and are the comfort of their lives.. 

In this case, while the father was in that ecstacy of delight 
which was natural at the recovery of his lost child, the elder 
son felt that this extravagant demonstration of joy was an evi- 
dence that his own services and obedience were not appreciated. 
Jealousy began to rankle in his heart, and he turned away from 
the scene of rejoicing with feelings of disgust. He could not 
understand or appreciate the feelings of the father, upon such 
an occasion. 



136 



Ruin and Restoration. 



There is much, in this part of the parable which is put in 
merely to give coloring and consistency to the whole picture, 
and for this reason needs no particular explanation. But it is 
generally supposed that the conduct of the elder son, in mani- 
festing an unwillingness that his outcast brother should be 
restored to equal privileges with himself, was intended as a 
reproof to the Jews, who were continually murmuring because 
the Saviour preached that salvation was for the Gentiles as well 
as for themselves. The main feature in the subject is, the 
complete restoration of the wanderer, and the joy of the house- 
hold at his return, together with the affiliated truth, that there 
is joy in heaven over a repentant sinner. 

I. The father might have pardoned his penitent child, and 
still left him in a miserable, degraded condition. Pardon does 
not necessarily imply restoration. An executive may pardon 
a criminal for a disgraceful crime ; but that act will not restore 
him to the place in society that he had occupied before he 
transgressed. There is a stigma attached to his character, and 
a loss of confidence not easily regained. Hence the whole 
gospel plan is one designed, not merely to secure pardon to the 
penitent, or, in other words, to avert the penalty of the law ; 
but to restore him to the place which he would have occupied 
had he never sinned. The term used as expressive of this idea 
is justification. "Being justified freely by his grace through 
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." And again : "Not by 
works of righteousness which we have done, but according to 
his mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and 
renewing of the Holy Grhost which He shed on us abundantly, 
through Jesus Christ our Saviour." "That being justified by 
His grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of 
eternal life." These, and various similar passages, show that 
the work of redemption is something more complete and com- 
prehensive in its designs, than simply to avert the consequences 
of transgression. It takes the sinner entirely out of the hands 
of the law, and accounts him as righteous in the sight of God ; 
through the righteousness of the Divine Head to whom he 



The Restoration. 



137 



becomes united by faith as one of the members of his spiritual 
body. This figure illustrates both his relation to Christ and the 
ground of his justification. Restoration is implied in the idea 
of justification. If a man is justified ; found not to be guilty ; 
or accounted as innocent, of course he is not deprived of any 
of his rights or privileges ; or if he has been, they are bound to 
be restored to him. 

This then implies first, that the sinner is restored to the affec- 
tions of God, and that God loves him, as he does an angel that 
has never sinned. 

Second. It implies that he is restored to His confidence. God 
immediately lays upon him duties, in which His own honor is 
concerned. The extension and glory of His earthly kingdom, 
are, in one sense, committed to his keeping. And He holds 
him responsible for the manner in which he discharges his trust. 

Third. It implies that the image of God is restored in his 
heart, and that he will ultimately attain to that exalted state of 
perfection and happiness which he would have possessed, had 
he never lost his position by transgression. All the wreck and 
ruin of sin will be repaired, all its traces obliterated, and in 
heaven he will wear as pure a robe as those spotless beings who 
have never known the contamination of sin. All this is beauti- 
fully illustrated in the reception of the prodigal, where he is 
immediately clothed, not as a menial, but as a son, and where 
it is distinctly intimated, that he is to be regarded by the 
household as restored to all the privileges of sonship. 

When we read that there was a feast made, and that the 
sound of rejoicing was heard, echoing through the halls of the 
paternal mansion, the question naturally suggests itself, who 
were the guests ? Who were assembled there to congratulate 
the parties, thus unexpectedly restored to each other? The 
father on the return of his lost son, and the son on his happy 
change of circumstances. Evidently, they must have been the 
friends of the father ; those who could sympathize with him in 
his present feelings, and who could rejoice that his child had 
escaped death, and from those snares and vices, which would 
end in something worse than mere physical death. They are 



138 Ruin and Restoration. 

precisely the same class as those who rejoice on earth, and are 
said to rejoice in heaven, when one sinner is converted. Those 
who love God and love His kingdom, and love all His holy 
intelligent universe, therefore rejoice when a being, endowed 
with immortality, like themselves, ceases to pervert the end of 
his creation by dishonoring his Maker, and covering himself 
with infamy, and unites with them in honoring and praising 
and adoring the Great Sovereign of heaven and earth. 

II. We have here disclosed then the great fact, that the 
beings of the heavenly world sympathize with us. This is not 
a doctrine learned only by obscure hints, or forced inferences ; 
but it is one of the first and last truths recorded in the history 
of creation and redemption. When the world was created for 
the abode of man, and fitted up as the theatre for the most 
astonishing development of infinite mercy, they looked with 
delightful interest on the scene. "The morning stars sang 
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy ;" not merely 
that He had afforded another evidence of His wisdom and 
power, in ordering and arranging a world of beauty ; but that 
He had created a new order of spiritual beings, like themselves, 
capable of loving, adoring and serving a common Sovereign. 
So through the entire history of our world, whether God 
designed blessings or judgment upon the human race, his 
angels have been ministers to accomplish his pleasure. 

When the Son of God descended to our world, in order to 
accomplish His errand of mercy, an innumerable multitude of 
these holy beings escorted Him to the confines of earth, and 
were heard praising God for this exhibition of His love, shout- 
ing, " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace and good 
will toward man." And at the winding up of all things, angels, 
we are told, will be commissioned to gather the elect from " one 
end of the heavens to the other," and will attend at the tribunal 
of judgment to witness and execute the decision of the great 
day. These are a few of the instances specified in sacred his- 
tory, in which they have been concerned in the administration 
of human affairs. But these events are of such magnitude that 



The Restoration. 



139 



there is nothing strange in the circnmstance that angels shonld 
be interested in their accomplishment. It seems fitting that 
they should be the attendants of the Saviour to the earth ; and 
wait, poised on their swift wings, over the place where he should 
rise, to escort, with songs of triumph, the Prince of Glory, after 
having conquered death and the grave, back to his heavenly 
throne. But when, as in the text, we are taught that the salva- 
tion of one sinner is a subject of rejoicing in the presence of 
God himself, we can hardly comprehend why so insignificant 
and sinful a creature should be an object of regard to them. 
This is, undoubtedly, because we cannot estimate the value of 
the soul as they can. "We do not understand its nature and 
powers as they do, nor can we conceive of the degree of exalta- 
tion to which it may attain in a spiritual and holy state. 

Having noticed, briefly, the fact that God and angels do sym- 
pathize with us in our present condition, I proceed to give some 
reasons why they rejoice when one sinner is brought to repent- 
ance. 

1. Because they know more of the nature and consequences 
of sin than we do. We see only its development on a scale 
where it is necessarily limited and counterbalanced by much 
that is good. God has not given up the world entirely to the 
dominion of Satan, but he still overrules and thwarts his machi- 
nations, permitting him to carry his schemes only to a certain 
fixed limit, which he cannot pass. And this we may rationally 
suppose to be just sufficient to demonstrate to us its true charac- 
ter and tendency. We notice much of its destructive influence ; 
we see what desolation it has wrought, but our observation is as 
nothing when compared with theirs. They beheld the first act 
of rebellion, when Satan exalted himself against God : 

" And with ambitious aim 
Against the throne and monarchy of God, 
Eaised impious war in Heaven, and battle proud, 
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power 
Hurled headlong, naming, from the etherial sky ; 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell, 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy Omnipotent to arms." 



140 



Ruin and Restoration. 



They saw, in the progress of ages, another order of beings 
created in the image of God, only one degree removed from 
themselves, and the newly created spirit, for a temporary pur- 
pose, put into a beautiful structure, the most perfect work of 
Infinite Wisdom,' where it was to develop its powers and its 
character, and then, perhaps, be translated and changed into a 
spiritual body, without sickness or death, or disorganization. 
This they saw, filled with pain and loathsome disease, and finally 
laid grim and ghastly in death. 

The world, which God had arranged to be the abode of beauty 
and happiness, they had seen desolated by war, and famine, and 
pestilence, and filled with extortion, oppression and human woe 
f in every conceivable form ; until sighs, and groans, and prayers 
were continually ascending, as a cloud of anguish, up to Heaven 
for pity and relief. Nor was this all. They had seen, what we 
only read of, as the ultimate consequences of transgression. 
They know how wide that impassible gulf is which separated 
Dives from Lazarus. And how intensely black that cloud is 
which rolls up, eternally, from the bottomless pit. They view 
sin, not only as it is directed against the majesty of God, but 
they behold its consequences as they recoil upon the head of the 
transgressor. And with such knowledge of its nature, and its 
certain results, they cannot fail to rejoice when an immortal 
being escapes the awful consequences of experiencing its utmost 
power. 

2. Angels rejoice when one sinner is brought to repentance, 
because they understand the nature and value of the soul. 
This we cannot comprehend in our present state. We have 
some faint idea of a spiritual existence and of immortality ; but 
it is not sufficiently definite to affect our conduct materially. 
We still live, as though this were the end of our being, and 
everything valuable to the soul was concentrated in this world, 
to be enjoyed during the few moments of time. We witness 
the development of the soul under great disadvantages, cum- 
bered and clogged by a material body, the seat of many wicked 
passions that are trammeling its powers and sullying its purity. 
A few years of expansion is all that we behold, and then its 



The Restoration. 



141 



powers, or ratlier their manifestation, is obscured by the decay 
of the earthly tabernacle, and it disappears from our view ; gone 
to a more congenial sphere, where it may rise and expand with- 
out limit. 

Who then can comprehend the degree of elevation and per- 
fection which it may attain, when freed from all these corrupting 
influences ; when the universe is open to its researches, and 
eternity made the only limit to its expansion ? As the creation 
of a single particle of matter in a century would eventually 
form a world, or a universe, so eternity will exalt the feeblest 
intellect, or the budding germ of the infant mind to a point of 
greatness above our conception. From what we know of the 
law of intellectual progress, we may rationally conclude that 
the infant who has just looked into our world with the natural 
eye, and then closed it forever, is eventually elevated above the 
brightest luminary that has ever shed forth its intellectual light 
in the academic grove, or from the philosopher's porch. 

All these things the angels have observed, while we only 
infer them from discovered laws, or receive them as an act of 
religious faith. "What a shocking sight it must be to them, 
when they behold a soul endowed with such faculties and 
powers, shutting itself out from its own proper sphere, where 
God designed that it should be ever advancing in knowledge, 
happiness and holiness, and preparing for itself a bed of misery, 
in which it must lie in ignorance and wretchedness forever ! 
No wonder that they rejoice over one soul saved when they so 
well know its worth. 

3. Angels rejoice when one sinner repents, because God has 
made it the condition of salvation. Repentance is not atone- 
ment ; nor a reparation for the injury done by sin. God has 
not required this of us; if he had, the harps of angels would 
never vibrate with the notes of salvation over the recovery of 
sinful beings. This is a reparation to law, and a satisfaction of 
justice, which God has provided for in another way. But 
repentance is an experience necessary to the soul itself, as well 
as becoming the position of one who seeks for pardon at the 
hand of the Being sinned against. The parent requires it of 



142 



Ruin and Restoration. 



his child ; the executive, of the criminal, and the sovereign, of 
the rebellions subject; and for the same reason, God demands 
it of the sinner, as a condition of pardon. The system of vica- 
rious atonement has not altered or subverted any of those eter- 
nal principles which exist in the very nature of things. The 
satisfaction which Christ has made to public justice only enables 
God to pardon those to whom pardon may be safely granted, and 
to restore those, who as penitent, will strengthen and uphold 
His government, and who, without this provision of mercy, 
could not be saved any more than the obdurate. None of the 
Divine attributes are changed since the rebel angels were cast 
forth from Heaven, or the first guilty pair expelled from Eden. 
The angel still guards the gate of paradise, with his flaming 
sword, excluding all that is unholy and impure. It would be 
the height of absurdity to suppose, that because God has sus- 
tained the dignity of his own character by a sacrifice to public 
justice, therefore he can demand nothing of individual trans- 
gressors as the terms of their pardon ! and that, by this scheme, 
he has so tied up his own hands, that his creatures may go on 
in rebellion, setting his authority at defiance ; and he be bound 
by this act to restore them to his love and confidence, and to a 
place in his heavenly kingdom. Angels, instead of rejoicing at 
this, might well remonstrate against such a scheme as subver- 
sive of all law, as annihilating the distinction between virtue 
and vice, sin and holiness, and breaking down the barriers 
between heaven and hell. Yet many are building their hopes 
of heaven on a scheme that would make angels weep rather 
than rejoice. Many who possess abundant means of obtaining 
correct views upon the relations which these two subjects sus- 
tain to each other, are living under the delusion that the 
atonement of Christ is in some way to affect their situation 
favorably, whether they regard the conditions upon which it 
promises salvation, or not ; or, that it will be a sufficient act of 
penitence to cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner," at the hour 
of death, and that God is bound by a sort of self-imposed ne- 
cessity to hear their prayer. But such ft God is not tne Being 
who swept the earth by flood, and wiped out the pollutions of 



The Restokation. 



143 



Sodom by fire, or opened its capacious jaws to crush a rebel 
troop; but the creature of a crazed imagination. Doubtless 
there were prolonged and piteous cries for mercy and shrieks 
of anguish, when the heavens were pouring out their fury upon 
that generation of sinners ; but their day of mercy had passed, 
and God in righteous indignation had taken the sword of ven- 
geance in His hand. 

They rejoice when a sinner is sincerely penitent, because that 
implies two things which are necessary as a qualification for 
heaven. One is, that the mind clearly perceives the error of 
the course pursued, and the nature of the injury done ; the 
other is a firm resolution to abandon sin. Now it is evident 
that unless the mind has undergone this kind of experience, 
and is prepared in future to sustain the authority of God, the 
individual is not a proper subject of clemency, or worthy of 
restoration to his love and confidence. He must be prepared 
to admit the justice of the divine government, so that whether 
worlds are created or destroyed; whether souls are elevated 
or cast down to hell, he is able to say with angels, Hallelujah, 
the Lord Omnipotent reigneth ; though clouds and darkness 
are round about his throne, yet righteousness and truth have 
their habitation there ! This is an experience not only fitting 
the relation of the sinner to the Being sinned against, but one 
absolutely necessary to the future happiness of the soul. A 
correct understanding of the important subject will show that 
all holy beings are deeply interested in maintaining these prin- 
ciples, because if they were abandoned, God could not sustain 
his government, or afford protection to the virtuous. It would 
not make the transgressor happy ; but it would destroy what- 
ever of happiness now exists ; it would not change hell into 
heaven, but it would make the universe one universal hell ! 

Angels rejoice, then, when one sinner repents, because the 
only obstacle in the way of salvation is removed. When they 
see a heart beginning to soften, and a soul that has long resisted 
the appeals of Infinite love, uttering feebly the prayer of peni- 
tence, saying, " Father, I have sinned against heaven, and 
before thee," they know that the only barrier in the way of 



144 



Ruin and Restoration. 



mercy is broken down, and that it will be washed in the laver 
of regeneration, clothed with the righteousness of Christ, and 
ultimately admitted into that bright circle who worship around 
the throne, and to sing the same praises, and engage in the 
same holy pursuits with themselves. 

If what has been advanced upon this subject be true, we 
perceive, first, that the salvation of one soul is of more conse- 
quence than a material world. God regards it so, because it 
costs Him more. When He created all things, it was by the 
word of His power, or, in the sublime language of inspiration, 
" He spake, and it was done ; He commanded, and it stood 
fast." But the redemption of our race cost him such a sacri- 
fice as none but God could make, and the same sacrifice that 
was necessary for the whole human family, was equally neces- 
sary for the salvation of a single individual. He has taught us, 
in various ways, that the material universe is of no consequence 
to Him, only as it is subservient to the interest and happiness 
of immortal beings and is made a theatre for the grandest 
development of His wisdom and mercy; for when this grea,t 
purpose is accomplished, it will at once be disorganized by the 
disruption of its own restrained elements, and roll again in the 
darkness of chaos, hissing and smoking in its track, a fearful 
monument of Infinite power. Nor have we any evidence that 
angels regard with interest the discoveries which the human 
mind is continually making of the power and utility of natural 
agents ; or the changes which the face of nature is constantly 
undergoing by the application of these agents. They are sub- 
jects of interest to weak material beings whose knowledge is 
restricted to a narrow sphere. But we have evidence that they 
feel the deepest interest in everything which affects the spiritual 
condition of the soul, and secures honor and glory to the Re- 
deemer of mankind. Yea, the world of nature may smile, and 
the flowers of spring exhale their sweetest fragrance, and the 
warblers of the woods fill the air with their richest notes, and 
God may regard, with benignity, the perfection of His own 
skill, yet the world was not created for them, but they were 
created for the happiness of man ; and there is nothing in the 



The Restoration. 



145 



universe, animate or inanimate, that he really delights in, but 
the incense of a pure heart, the love and praise of rational 
beings. 

Second. The salvation of the soul is of more consequence to 
the individual than the possession of a world, because, if that is 
lost, then all is lost. Therefore, the two are put in opposition, 
and the proposition announced : " What doth it profit a man if 
he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?" This is a 
question that no man has ever attempted to answer, except as 
God has answered it ; yet many, very many, have lost their 
souls for a piece of this world so small that the least perceptible 
dot on the map would be an exaggerated representation of their 
earthly possessions. And, small as it is, how short the time 
they are allowed to possess it ! Think of it, ye rational beings ! 
A poul, priceless beyond computation, because immortal, bar- 
tere i for a fraction of this world too minute to be expressed, 
and that only leased for a few years ! We may shrink from this 
kind of proposition, if we will ; but that does not change its 
truth. We may put a veil before our eyes, and strenuously 
refuse to look to future probabilities or contingencies : we may 
even screen ourselves under the admitted doctrine that the future 
is known only to God ; yet we do know that the time is not 
distant when the honors of the world will fade on the withered 
brow of the warrior ; when the worldling will cry in despairing 
accents, " how is the gold waxed dim, and the most fine gold 
changed :" when these beautiful fields and spreading lawns and 
waving forests will fade from the sight ; and all these monuments 
of pride and skill, which now form the habitation of the body, 
will moulder in ruins, and the world, with all its mighty attrac- 
tions, be at an end. Then, of what consequence will all these 
be to you, if but one soul is lost, and that should be yourself? 

We are also taught in this subject, at least inferentially, that 

the Church of God in heaven and on earth is one — one in spirit 

and one in object. What is the design of all these means of 

grace, these prayers, these sermons, these songs of praise and 

thanksgiving which ascend from the earthly sanctuary, unless 

>t be the salvation of souls and the glory of the Redeemer? 
19 



146 



Ruin and Restoration. 



And is it not the same theme that occupies the thoughts and 
inspires the songs of angels, when they rejoice over a single 
repentant sinner ? It is a delightful thought, when the Christian 
permits his spirit to be carried away with its holy inspiration, for 
him to know that he has associated with him such beings as 
these, and that the same blessed spirits who once labored and 
prayed with us on earth are bending with sympathy over the 
scene of their former struggles and toils, or are singing in heaven 
for joy when one and another wandering sinner is brought home 
to God. What a thrill of ecstacy must the mother feel when 
the child which she left reluctantly, because it was so wayward 
and thoughtless, is seen, with a penitent heart, crying, " God be 
merciful to me a sinner !" 

Who can assert with confidence that these parents, and wives, 
and brothers, and sisters are not ministering spirits, that are 
commissioned to watch over those whom they have left behind ? 
for, says Paul, "are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth 
to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation ?" 

"How oft do they their silver bowers leave, 
To come to succor us, that succor want ! 
How do they with golden pinions cleave 
The yielding skies, like flying pursuivants 
Against foul fiends, to aid us militant ! 
They for us fight, they watch and duly ward, 
And their bright squadrons round about us plant ; 
And all for love and nothing for reward ; 
0, why should heavenly God to man have such regard ?" 

Then why should the Church of God ever despair ? Why 
should we hang our harps upon the willows, and sit down in 
gloomy despondency over our forsaken condition, when we 
have leagued with us such a mighty host as this, powerful with 
man and powerful with God. 

Third. We perceive, then, how the humblest individual may 
become more distinguished than the conqueror of a world. 
For angels have no sympathy, or interest in conquests of blood, 
unless it be to look with pity upon the millions who are sent 
to their final doom, and with sympathy upon the thousands 
who weep over their unhappy fate. These convulsions, which 



The Restoration. 



147 



have filled the world with joy or sorrow, and the nations with 
weeping and mirth, have occasioned no joy in heaven. Bnt 
one of you, the humblest child that hears me, can rejoice the 
hearts of the friends of God on earth, if with a penitent soul 
you come to Him seeking pardon ; and waiting angels will wing 
their swift flight to heaven, to proclaim the victory you have 
achieved. And there will be joy in heaven " that the dead is 
alive again and the lost is found." May we not hope, yea, 
reasonably expect, that this great and glorious truth will 
awaken new thoughts and implant new resolutions in some 
hitherto vacillating and undecided mind ? 



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